I'm not discrediting Dark Souls (or Demon's Souls) but both games are only difficult because it's entirely foreign to the player on purpose. There is no other way to play and win at the game other than to lose (unless you like to spoil things by reading walkthroughs and strategy guides). Unavoidable or unknowable difficulties aren't my cup of tea any more - those games went out with the systems of the 90s as far as I'm concerned.
Though I'm all for challenge but there are better ways to present it, I think.
I'm enjoying Dark Souls right now as well and I agree that MMORPGs could benefit from more challenge.
But when I think about what makes Dark Souls challenging...what REALLY makes it tough. I realize it's the death penalty. Sure, some of the monsters are tough. Sure, the bosses take a few tries to beat. But if you just got to start the boss fight over again when you died with no penalty...it wouldn't be that hard.
You'd die to the boss 10 times or so, and then eventually win. Same with normal enemies. If you could just save anywhere, they wouldn't be that much of an issue. You'd die once or twice, reload, and be done with it.
The fact that dying has the possibility of costing you tons of souls (exp) and progress is what makes this game hard. You not only have to play well, you have to play well and conservatively constantly or risk significant set backs. The game keeps you on your toes.
I know a lot of people here think death penalties are "bad design" or have no purpose other than covering up a lack of content. But when you look at Dark Souls, you can't help but see the value of a well implemented death penalty.
The problem is one of risk when carrying something like that over to an MMO. In Dark/Demon Souls it works from a business perspective because regardless of how soon some may give up, they've paid and the company has collected. We all know how that works differently for an MMO. It pretty much goes without saying. It's just not that cut and dry.
IN an MMO format something like this has to be done in a way that remains highly fun. If you can lose it all, making the grind to achieve and collect highly mind numbing, (EVE for some) just deosn't work on a massive scale. In the end I think it's more of a game-play barrier that MMO's need to overcome before we'll see great systems like this in them.
Hmmm, I have a few counter arguments to your points.
First, Dark Souls is a sequel. People basically knew what they were getting into when they bought it because they have probably either played Demon Souls before, or heard about what it's like. If people were quitting Demon Souls left and right because the death penalty made the game not "fun" for them, then Dark Souls would not have sold well.
But that's not what happened. Dark Souls sold even better than Demon Souls. So well in fact, that many stores ran out of stock.
Second, an MMORPG has to remain fun for someone to keep playing, true. And one would think that frustrations from a death penalty would make the game "not fun" and so people would quit. And I'm sure this happens.
But think about the other side of the coin. When the game has virtually no penalty for failure, and combat is relatively easy, everything just turns into a grind. When I play WoW or any game like it, I'm never really worried. If I die, it's a 2-3 minute walk back to my corpse and I'm back in action. This may sound all well and good, but the game loses me.
This lack of concern, this indifference, permeates my entire play experience. It just turns into a steady grind where I watch my exp bar increase. I never approach situations cautiously because the penalty for dying is trivial. There's no reason for caution, or fear, or excitement, or jubilation, because there is nothing at risk.
On the other hand, when I play Dark Souls, I almost cry with relief everytime I find another bonfire (save point) just because I know so much is at stake.
So in conclusion, I would much rather experience the jubilation of success along with the pain and frustration of failure that goes along with a harsh death penalty; then just the cold placid grind that goes along with hardly any death penalty at all. I know not everyone is like this, but I think there are more gamers that feel like I do than many would think. If there weren't, Dark Souls and Demon Souls would have flopped.
I'm positive if most games were like Dark Souls the video game market would be 1/20th the size it is now.
Good for you that you like it. You feel like you accomplished something and I feel like you wasted a lot of time where you could have been having fun or getting a chore done. Don't push your views on me, and I won't reciprocate.
Well the good thing is we have variety in the video game market so there's no need for anyone to "push" their views onto anyone else. Hopefully, there will be games to appease everyone's tastes.
That said...I think your assessment that the market would be "1/20th" of its size is bunk. For some reason, it seems like everyone who hates harsh death penalties or "frustrating" games feels like the rest of the world agrees with them and there's just this tiny niche of masochistic players that enjoy harsher death penalties.
You will note, that Dark Souls sold almost 280K copies in its first week...Gears of War 3 only sold about 56K in its first week.
You may not like harsh death penalties and "frustrating" games, but there are obviously people that do. I think Dark Souls debunked the myth that the majority of gamers won't play a game with a harsher death penalty.
I'm not discrediting Dark Souls (or Demon's Souls) but both games are only difficult because it's entirely foreign to the player on purpose. There is no other way to play and win at the game other than to lose (unless you like to spoil things by reading walkthroughs and strategy guides). Unavoidable or unknowable difficulties aren't my cup of tea any more - those games went out with the systems of the 90s as far as I'm concerned.
Though I'm all for challenge but there are better ways to present it, I think.
Completely wrong about Demon's / Dark Souls. They're not hard because they're trial and error based games. They're hard because it's very unforgiving for recklesness and mistakes. An ounce of caution, patience, and situational awareness (particularly new areas to you - egress points if things get really hairy) will carry you very far. Charging in headlong will usually get you killed in terrible ways. The big, nasty bosses have patterns for you to notice and exploit, but you have to defend / evade against some horrendous attacks to notice them. As a player and a fan of the predecessor, Demon's Souls also, they're games that make you actually consider, "Is it worth it right now to try this?" Risk and Reward are big themes of the titles, and they throw great heaps of both onto the player.
The developers for Demon's / Dark Souls are among those that, thankfully, haven't bought into the overly simplistic gaming of today: The "Press 'F' for action!!!" era of gaming.
You say you're into challenge, but you're just spamming the "F" key.
"I have only two out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." (First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, US Marine Corps, Soissons, 19 July 1918)
Originally posted by Creslin321 Originally posted by Golelorn I'm positive if most games were like Dark Souls the video game market would be 1/20th the size it is now. Good for you that you like it. You feel like you accomplished something and I feel like you wasted a lot of time where you could have been having fun or getting a chore done. Don't push your views on me, and I won't reciprocate.
Well the good thing is we have variety in the video game market so there's no need for anyone to "push" their views onto anyone else. Hopefully, there will be games to appease everyone's tastes. That said...I think your assessment that the market would be "1/20th" of its size is bunk. For some reason, it seems like everyone who hates harsh death penalties or "frustrating" games feels like the rest of the world agrees with them and there's just this tiny niche of masochistic players that enjoy harsher death penalties. I would like to refer you to this page: http://www.siliconera.com/2011/09/28/this-week-in-sales-dark-souls-sees-demon-sales-ninjas-infiltrate-3ds/. You will note, that Dark Souls sold almost 280K copies in its first week...Gears of War 3 only sold about 56K in its first week. You may not like harsh death penalties and "frustrating" games, but there are obviously people that do. I think Dark Souls debunked the myth that the majority of gamers won't play a game with a harsher death penalty.
Rage sold more copies than Dark Souls and so did Fifa 12. If we're going to base overall gamer preferences on sales charts, having no death penalties at all and not running on many machines are features that make games sell even better than cranking the difficulty up.
I would like to see how quickly sales drop off for the game compared to other game's sales. Especially Rage. How well does cranking the difficulty up compare to a totally borked game experience in regards to monthly sales?
My opinion on mmorpg is that having more difficult encounters and having situations where you have to sneak around instead of charging in with guns blazing would be good. Increasing death penalties is not (in my opinion) a way to increase difficulty of content...it's just a way to exercise patience, nothing more.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Last night after work I went and picked up a copy of Dark Souls. I must say it is the most fun and most challenging game I have ever played. You die alot int his game but what keeps me motivated to play is the challenge. You see, this is what mmos lack alot of today, challenge. Today's mmos, everything is dumbed down so that even a caveman can do it for the sake of a sale. This idea completely ruins the fun aspect of mmos. Why would I want to keep playing a game that has no challenge and no fun ? We need to have mmos that are challenging and fun to play. Making mmos that aren't fun and challenging just totally hurts the mmo genre as a whole.
I don't mind that you want challenge. Just remember that I don't. As long as both options are offered as equally as possible in our MMOs then we're golden. I hate when challenge is put above immersion/atmosphere or just normal progression mechanics. What I want is a "world" to explore hand crafted to perfection, or close to it. I also want meaningful and fun progression mechanics as well as alternatives to gameplay. Enough with the raid or die mentality. I challenge game developers to create an MMORPG where raiding isn't the focus at endgame. Just to see what they come up with.
I'm positive if most games were like Dark Souls the video game market would be 1/20th the size it is now.
Good for you that you like it. You feel like you accomplished something and I feel like you wasted a lot of time where you could have been having fun or getting a chore done. Don't push your views on me, and I won't reciprocate.
Well the good thing is we have variety in the video game market so there's no need for anyone to "push" their views onto anyone else. Hopefully, there will be games to appease everyone's tastes.
That said...I think your assessment that the market would be "1/20th" of its size is bunk. For some reason, it seems like everyone who hates harsh death penalties or "frustrating" games feels like the rest of the world agrees with them and there's just this tiny niche of masochistic players that enjoy harsher death penalties.
You will note, that Dark Souls sold almost 280K copies in its first week...Gears of War 3 only sold about 56K in its first week.
You may not like harsh death penalties and "frustrating" games, but there are obviously people that do. I think Dark Souls debunked the myth that the majority of gamers won't play a game with a harsher death penalty.
Rage sold more copies than Dark Souls and so did Fifa 12. If we're going to base overall gamer preferences on sales charts, having no death penalties at all and not running on many machines are features that make games sell even better than cranking the difficulty up.
I would like to see how quickly sales drop off for the game compared to other game's sales. Especially Rage. How well does cranking the difficulty up compare to a totally borked game experience in regards to monthly sales?
My opinion on mmorpg is that having more difficult encounters and having situations where you have to sneak around instead of charging in with guns blazing would be good. Increasing death penalties is not (in my opinion) a way to increase difficulty of content...it's just a way to exercise patience, nothing more.
Well thing is diffrent things are attractive to diffrent people. No surprise that hard, challanging on unforgiving (choose one, kinda based on personal definition) sold less copies than more casual games, especially huge brand like Fifa.
Still based on reception, precedesor sales (Demon Souls and that was PS3 exclusive) and initial sales, there is high propability that Dark Souls will be commercial success.
Only thing that this proves that there is still a market for hard, challanging on unforgiving games. On the one hand it showes that it is not as big as for easier games, on the other it shows that it is not as tiny niche as some people tell it is.
So imho even currently, some challanging, unforgiving, hard mmorpg could have commercial success, surely not on WoW scale, nothing evven close, but with potential to surpass many less successful 'easy' mmorpg's.
One thing, I really dislike when some people combine, challange = raids.
I don't really like raids. I don't mind them in game, as long as their rewards are not much better than from other sources. But they require way too much planning and time for me to participate in them, more than accidentaly filling for someone if I happen to have time (which happens really rarely like 1 per month max).
So I don't want ALL mmorpg's to start be challanging, I don't even want majority of them to be like that.
I just want SOME of them, small MINORITY of them, to be challanging and I am not speaking of really unfinished, featureless indie productions.
So just one or very few from 'bit bigger' productions to have challaning OPEN WORLD and normal dungeons.
Making challange by just putting very hard end game raid is bad design imo. Kinda ridiculous to make all game easy then put some ridiculous hard raid at the end, that just very small % of gamers have time to even attempt to do.
I'm positive if most games were like Dark Souls the video game market would be 1/20th the size it is now.
Good for you that you like it. You feel like you accomplished something and I feel like you wasted a lot of time where you could have been having fun or getting a chore done. Don't push your views on me, and I won't reciprocate.
Well the good thing is we have variety in the video game market so there's no need for anyone to "push" their views onto anyone else. Hopefully, there will be games to appease everyone's tastes.
That said...I think your assessment that the market would be "1/20th" of its size is bunk. For some reason, it seems like everyone who hates harsh death penalties or "frustrating" games feels like the rest of the world agrees with them and there's just this tiny niche of masochistic players that enjoy harsher death penalties.
You will note, that Dark Souls sold almost 280K copies in its first week...Gears of War 3 only sold about 56K in its first week.
You may not like harsh death penalties and "frustrating" games, but there are obviously people that do. I think Dark Souls debunked the myth that the majority of gamers won't play a game with a harsher death penalty.
Rage sold more copies than Dark Souls and so did Fifa 12. If we're going to base overall gamer preferences on sales charts, having no death penalties at all and not running on many machines are features that make games sell even better than cranking the difficulty up.
I would like to see how quickly sales drop off for the game compared to other game's sales. Especially Rage. How well does cranking the difficulty up compare to a totally borked game experience in regards to monthly sales?
My opinion on mmorpg is that having more difficult encounters and having situations where you have to sneak around instead of charging in with guns blazing would be good. Increasing death penalties is not (in my opinion) a way to increase difficulty of content...it's just a way to exercise patience, nothing more.
There are way to many variables to base overall preferences on sales charts as you say. But at the same time, since Dark Souls sold so well, I think it shows that the vast majority modern gamers are not completely averse to harsher death penalties as so many people seem to believe. If harsh death penalties were a deal breaker for most gamers, Dark Souls would have flopped.
What I have heard from many sources (reviews, articles, previews, player testimonials, etc.) is that Dark Souls is "difficult" because of the need for 100% perfect execution of a memorized pattern/scenario.
So you die and die and die until you perfectly memorize the pattern and/or scenario to know exactly what to do when, exactly where to step, exactly what to use etc.
And yes, there is "skill" involved in the execution.
You know what that sounds like to me?
WOW raiding.
BAM!
/thread
Oh, I guess because "end-game" is only part of the game it doesn't count... apparently people want that level of difficulty from the first moment they ever log into the game all the way through.
You will note, that Dark Souls sold almost 280K copies in its first week...Gears of War 3 only sold about 56K in its first week.
Yes, because Gears of War 3 also had over a million pre-orders which don't count in that 56k box sales in the first week lol
So GoW3 sold at least 1.056 million copies...
"Sales of this final chapter in the Gears series topped 1.3 million at last tally and are expected to surpass the first two installments, which sold about 13 million copies combined."
Originally posted by Creslin321 Originally posted by lizardbones
Originally posted by Creslin321
Originally posted by Golelorn I'm positive if most games were like Dark Souls the video game market would be 1/20th the size it is now. Good for you that you like it. You feel like you accomplished something and I feel like you wasted a lot of time where you could have been having fun or getting a chore done. Don't push your views on me, and I won't reciprocate.
Well the good thing is we have variety in the video game market so there's no need for anyone to "push" their views onto anyone else. Hopefully, there will be games to appease everyone's tastes. That said...I think your assessment that the market would be "1/20th" of its size is bunk. For some reason, it seems like everyone who hates harsh death penalties or "frustrating" games feels like the rest of the world agrees with them and there's just this tiny niche of masochistic players that enjoy harsher death penalties. I would like to refer you to this page: http://www.siliconera.com/2011/09/28/this-week-in-sales-dark-souls-sees-demon-sales-ninjas-infiltrate-3ds/. You will note, that Dark Souls sold almost 280K copies in its first week...Gears of War 3 only sold about 56K in its first week. You may not like harsh death penalties and "frustrating" games, but there are obviously people that do. I think Dark Souls debunked the myth that the majority of gamers won't play a game with a harsher death penalty.
Rage sold more copies than Dark Souls and so did Fifa 12. If we're going to base overall gamer preferences on sales charts, having no death penalties at all and not running on many machines are features that make games sell even better than cranking the difficulty up.
I would like to see how quickly sales drop off for the game compared to other game's sales. Especially Rage. How well does cranking the difficulty up compare to a totally borked game experience in regards to monthly sales?
My opinion on mmorpg is that having more difficult encounters and having situations where you have to sneak around instead of charging in with guns blazing would be good. Increasing death penalties is not (in my opinion) a way to increase difficulty of content...it's just a way to exercise patience, nothing more.
There are way to many variables to base overall preferences on sales charts as you say. But at the same time, since Dark Souls sold so well, I think it shows that the vast majority modern gamers are not completely averse to harsher death penalties as so many people seem to believe. If harsh death penalties were a deal breaker for most gamers, Dark Souls would have flopped.
It is way too early to start using the phrase 'vast majority' when you look at the sales of Dark Souls. To use that phrase, they'd need to sell something like 6.5 Million boxes. Call of Duty has sold something like 13.7 Million boxes. Dark Souls is at a half million worldwide, including Japan, where it's sold the most copies.
I'm not saying anything at all about the quality of Dark Souls, but looking at their sales and relating that to what the 'vast majority' of gamers want is a reach, at best.
Rift sold more copies than Dark Souls in their first week. Rift hasn't even released worldwide yet. More people want what Rift offers than what Dark Souls offers. The vast majority of gamers want lite death penalties, hot button based skill attacks and tab sticky targeted combat. See? It's just as silly with my example.
It is a totally different story if you think that MMORPG, in your opinion would do better to have Dark Souls mechanics built in. I'm just saying that the sales of Dark Souls doesn't support that position...or any position in particular.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Why not have servers dedicated to the hardcore with difficult content and servers for the casual, care bear crowd. It a lot more work but I believe it would keep everybody happier. Maybe have the option to go to a harder server if things get too easy for you.
I'm positive if most games were like Dark Souls the video game market would be 1/20th the size it is now.
Good for you that you like it. You feel like you accomplished something and I feel like you wasted a lot of time where you could have been having fun or getting a chore done. Don't push your views on me, and I won't reciprocate.
Well the good thing is we have variety in the video game market so there's no need for anyone to "push" their views onto anyone else. Hopefully, there will be games to appease everyone's tastes.
That said...I think your assessment that the market would be "1/20th" of its size is bunk. For some reason, it seems like everyone who hates harsh death penalties or "frustrating" games feels like the rest of the world agrees with them and there's just this tiny niche of masochistic players that enjoy harsher death penalties.
You will note, that Dark Souls sold almost 280K copies in its first week...Gears of War 3 only sold about 56K in its first week.
You may not like harsh death penalties and "frustrating" games, but there are obviously people that do. I think Dark Souls debunked the myth that the majority of gamers won't play a game with a harsher death penalty.
Rage sold more copies than Dark Souls and so did Fifa 12. If we're going to base overall gamer preferences on sales charts, having no death penalties at all and not running on many machines are features that make games sell even better than cranking the difficulty up.
I would like to see how quickly sales drop off for the game compared to other game's sales. Especially Rage. How well does cranking the difficulty up compare to a totally borked game experience in regards to monthly sales?
My opinion on mmorpg is that having more difficult encounters and having situations where you have to sneak around instead of charging in with guns blazing would be good. Increasing death penalties is not (in my opinion) a way to increase difficulty of content...it's just a way to exercise patience, nothing more.
There are way to many variables to base overall preferences on sales charts as you say. But at the same time, since Dark Souls sold so well, I think it shows that the vast majority modern gamers are not completely averse to harsher death penalties as so many people seem to believe. If harsh death penalties were a deal breaker for most gamers, Dark Souls would have flopped.
It is way too early to start using the phrase 'vast majority' when you look at the sales of Dark Souls. To use that phrase, they'd need to sell something like 6.5 Million boxes. Call of Duty has sold something like 13.7 Million boxes. Dark Souls is at a half million worldwide, including Japan, where it's sold the most copies.
I'm not saying anything at all about the quality of Dark Souls, but looking at their sales and relating that to what the 'vast majority' of gamers want is a reach, at best.
Rift sold more copies than Dark Souls in their first week. Rift hasn't even released worldwide yet. More people want what Rift offers than what Dark Souls offers. The vast majority of gamers want lite death penalties, hot button based skill attacks and tab sticky targeted combat. See? It's just as silly with my example.
It is a totally different story if you think that MMORPG, in your opinion would do better to have Dark Souls mechanics built in. I'm just saying that the sales of Dark Souls doesn't support that position...or any position in particular.
I actually didn't say that the vast majority of gamers WANTED harsh death penalties...just that the vast majority aren't completed turned OFF by harsh death penalties. Difference .
Originally posted by Creslin321 Originally posted by lizardbones
Originally posted by Creslin321
Originally posted by lizardbones
Originally posted by Creslin321
Originally posted by Golelorn I'm positive if most games were like Dark Souls the video game market would be 1/20th the size it is now. Good for you that you like it. You feel like you accomplished something and I feel like you wasted a lot of time where you could have been having fun or getting a chore done. Don't push your views on me, and I won't reciprocate.
Well the good thing is we have variety in the video game market so there's no need for anyone to "push" their views onto anyone else. Hopefully, there will be games to appease everyone's tastes. That said...I think your assessment that the market would be "1/20th" of its size is bunk. For some reason, it seems like everyone who hates harsh death penalties or "frustrating" games feels like the rest of the world agrees with them and there's just this tiny niche of masochistic players that enjoy harsher death penalties. I would like to refer you to this page: http://www.siliconera.com/2011/09/28/this-week-in-sales-dark-souls-sees-demon-sales-ninjas-infiltrate-3ds/. You will note, that Dark Souls sold almost 280K copies in its first week...Gears of War 3 only sold about 56K in its first week. You may not like harsh death penalties and "frustrating" games, but there are obviously people that do. I think Dark Souls debunked the myth that the majority of gamers won't play a game with a harsher death penalty.
Rage sold more copies than Dark Souls and so did Fifa 12. If we're going to base overall gamer preferences on sales charts, having no death penalties at all and not running on many machines are features that make games sell even better than cranking the difficulty up.
I would like to see how quickly sales drop off for the game compared to other game's sales. Especially Rage. How well does cranking the difficulty up compare to a totally borked game experience in regards to monthly sales?
My opinion on mmorpg is that having more difficult encounters and having situations where you have to sneak around instead of charging in with guns blazing would be good. Increasing death penalties is not (in my opinion) a way to increase difficulty of content...it's just a way to exercise patience, nothing more.
There are way to many variables to base overall preferences on sales charts as you say. But at the same time, since Dark Souls sold so well, I think it shows that the vast majority modern gamers are not completely averse to harsher death penalties as so many people seem to believe. If harsh death penalties were a deal breaker for most gamers, Dark Souls would have flopped.
It is way too early to start using the phrase 'vast majority' when you look at the sales of Dark Souls. To use that phrase, they'd need to sell something like 6.5 Million boxes. Call of Duty has sold something like 13.7 Million boxes. Dark Souls is at a half million worldwide, including Japan, where it's sold the most copies.
I'm not saying anything at all about the quality of Dark Souls, but looking at their sales and relating that to what the 'vast majority' of gamers want is a reach, at best.
Rift sold more copies than Dark Souls in their first week. Rift hasn't even released worldwide yet. More people want what Rift offers than what Dark Souls offers. The vast majority of gamers want lite death penalties, hot button based skill attacks and tab sticky targeted combat. See? It's just as silly with my example.
It is a totally different story if you think that MMORPG, in your opinion would do better to have Dark Souls mechanics built in. I'm just saying that the sales of Dark Souls doesn't support that position...or any position in particular.
I actually didn't say that the vast majority of gamers WANTED harsh death penalties...just that the vast majority aren't completed turned OFF by harsh death penalties. Difference .
Based on the sales of Dark Souls, you can't infer anything about the 'vast majority' of gamers. At all. Dark Souls has not sold to the vast majority of gamers, or the majority of gamers. They've sold to a minority of gamers, most of them in Japan, where harder games, including harsh death penalties, sell very well.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I actually didn't say that the vast majority of gamers WANTED harsh death penalties...just that the vast majority aren't completed turned OFF by harsh death penalties. Difference .
500k people, mostly in Japan, does not = vast majority by any stretch of the word... at all.. ever...
The vast majority of MMO gamers play more lenient, low penalty games like WoW.
The vast majority of gamers play nothing but facebook games or online hearts/poker and don't own a console of any kind.
Just giving some perspective...
The vast majority of gamers ARE turned OFF by harsh death penalties.
You will note, that Dark Souls sold almost 280K copies in its first week...Gears of War 3 only sold about 56K in its first week.
Yes, because Gears of War 3 also had over a million pre-orders which don't count in that 56k box sales in the first week lol
So GoW3 sold at least 1.056 million copies...
"Sales of this final chapter in the Gears series topped 1.3 million at last tally and are expected to surpass the first two installments, which sold about 13 million copies combined."
I actually didn't say that the vast majority of gamers WANTED harsh death penalties...just that the vast majority aren't completed turned OFF by harsh death penalties. Difference .
500k people, mostly in Japan, does not = vast majority by any stretch of the word... at all.. ever...
The vast majority of MMO gamers play more lenient, low penalty games like WoW.
The vast majority of gamers play nothing but facebook games or online hearts/poker and don't own a console of any kind.
Just giving some perspective...
The vast majority of gamers ARE turned OFF by harsh death penalties.
FACT.
Let me rephrase and just say that the market for gamers that are not turned off by harsh death penalties is large enough to be profitable for a AAA MMORPG.
That is really what I meant when I said "vast majority." I'm just saying that the market for gamers like this isn't the tiny niche that a lot of people think it is.
Last night after work I went and picked up a copy of Dark Souls. I must say it is the most fun and most challenging game I have ever played. You die alot int his game but what keeps me motivated to play is the challenge. You see, this is what mmos lack alot of today, challenge. Today's mmos, everything is dumbed down so that even a caveman can do it for the sake of a sale. This idea completely ruins the fun aspect of mmos. Why would I want to keep playing a game that has no challenge and no fun ? We need to have mmos that are challenging and fun to play. Making mmos that aren't fun and challenging just totally hurts the mmo genre as a whole.
This part of what are mmos missing has been said 1000000s of times.
Let me rephrase and just say that the market for gamers that are not turned off by harsh death penalties is large enough to be profitable for a AAA MMORPG.
That is really what I meant when I said "vast majority." I'm just saying that the market for gamers like this isn't the tiny niche that a lot of people think it is.
That's a fair point.
Kind of
Hard to make a AAA MMO with the budget neccessary for an expected audience of 500k.
I guess it depends on how you define AAA though, to be honest.
Like, Rift was/is probably one of the only truly AAA MMO's to be released in quite some time.
Polished, relatively "complete," marketed and distributed well across many regions, etc.
6 months in and still going strong (comparitively) etc.
I would not say by any stretch of the word that FFXIV/AoC/WAR/Aion/STO/DCUO or anything else 2005-2011 were truly AAA MMOs.
I think LOTRO became AAA over time, but missed its "window" and is now easily a AAA F2P MMO.
Know what I mean?
AAA is a term that is used OFTEN on this site, but for what? What is the true definition?
Let me rephrase and just say that the market for gamers that are not turned off by harsh death penalties is large enough to be profitable for a AAA MMORPG.
That is really what I meant when I said "vast majority." I'm just saying that the market for gamers like this isn't the tiny niche that a lot of people think it is.
That's a fair point.
Kind of
Hard to make a AAA MMO with the budget neccessary for an expected audience of 500k.
I guess it depends on how you define AAA though, to be honest.
Like, Rift was/is probably one of the only truly AAA MMO's to be released in quite some time.
Polished, relatively "complete," marketed and distributed well across many regions, etc.
6 months in and still going strong (comparitively) etc.
I would not say by any stretch of the word that FFXIV/AoC/WAR/Aion/STO/DCUO or anything else 2005-2011 were truly AAA MMOs.
I think LOTRO became AAA over time, but missed its "window" and is now easily a AAA F2P MMO.
Know what I mean?
AAA is a term that is used OFTEN on this site, but for what? What is the true definition?
AAA should mean quality. I think you're pretty much correct by calling Rift a AAA mmo.
To add my 2 cents I think the for a death penalty to work it depends on how the game is designed. There are some MMOs in which it works (UO, Eve) and some in which it was complete junk (FFXI). In Demon Souls and Dark Souls it works well with the way the whole game and it's progression has been set up.
Let me rephrase and just say that the market for gamers that are not turned off by harsh death penalties is large enough to be profitable for a AAA MMORPG.
That is really what I meant when I said "vast majority." I'm just saying that the market for gamers like this isn't the tiny niche that a lot of people think it is.
That's a fair point.
Kind of
Hard to make a AAA MMO with the budget neccessary for an expected audience of 500k.
I guess it depends on how you define AAA though, to be honest.
Like, Rift was/is probably one of the only truly AAA MMO's to be released in quite some time.
Polished, relatively "complete," marketed and distributed well across many regions, etc.
6 months in and still going strong (comparitively) etc.
I would not say by any stretch of the word that FFXIV/AoC/WAR/Aion/STO/DCUO or anything else 2005-2011 were truly AAA MMOs.
I think LOTRO became AAA over time, but missed its "window" and is now easily a AAA F2P MMO.
Know what I mean?
AAA is a term that is used OFTEN on this site, but for what? What is the true definition?
"AAA" is debateable for sure. When I use it, I just mean a well funded game. To me, WAR and Aion were AAA MMORPGs that just didn't last long. Whereas Darkfall and MO are not "AAA." So "AAA" doesn't have much to do with the "quality" of a game when I use it...just its financial backing. I guess by "AAA" I just mean "not indie" .
Also, Demon Souls sold over 1 million copies during its lifetime and I think 1 million is plenty for a AAA MMORPG. But that point doesn't really mean much. Dark Souls and Demon Souls are console single player RPGs, you can't really look at their sales numbers and say that "this many people will buy an MMORPG with a harsher death penalty." The only thing I think you can glean from it is that a large amount of gamers DID buy a game with a harsh death penalty, so the feature isn't as despised as many think.
"AAA" is debateable for sure. When I use it, I just mean a well funded game. To me, WAR and Aion were AAA MMORPGs that just didn't last long. Whereas Darkfall and MO are not "AAA." So "AAA" doesn't have much to do with the "quality" of a game when I use it...just its financial backing. I guess by "AAA" I just mean "not indie" .
Again, fair points sir. +1 interwebs for good discussion!
I more consider AAA a mark of quality, not simply funding - hence my previous "definition."
I have no doubt there are millions of gamers who would enjoy a more difficult/challenging MMORPG, but that aspect of the game is only one factor out of many that pull people towards or pushes them away from a particular MMO title.
For instance, I'd appreciate a MMO with much more of that old-school "open world" PvE that makes the leveling up process much more of an adventure.
Some would call that "sandbox" and I'd say the above mentioned would likely be included in most sandbox designs.
But I despise grinding as I feel it's just a handicap put in place to hide limited content and uninspired systems which SHOULD be leading to immergent gameplay.
I also despise FFA PvP as it has been implemented in this genre thus far.
So if I were to make a difficult, challenging AAA MMORPG it wouldn't have levels/skills to grind for months/years and it would not have FFA PvP (at least not like we've ever seen it before)
So would those two things cut those "millions" of potential players down to hundreds of thousands? tens of thousads?
"AAA" is debateable for sure. When I use it, I just mean a well funded game. To me, WAR and Aion were AAA MMORPGs that just didn't last long. Whereas Darkfall and MO are not "AAA." So "AAA" doesn't have much to do with the "quality" of a game when I use it...just its financial backing. I guess by "AAA" I just mean "not indie" .
Again, fair points sir. +1 interwebs for good discussion!
I more consider AAA a mark of quality, not simply funding - hence my previous "definition."
I have no doubt there are millions of gamers who would enjoy a more difficult/challenging MMORPG, but that aspect of the game is only one factor out of many that pull people towards or pushes them away from a particular MMO title.
For instance, I'd appreciate a MMO with much more of that old-school "open world" PvE that makes the leveling up process much more of an adventure.
Some would call that "sandbox" and I'd say the above mentioned would likely be included in most sandbox designs.
But I despise grinding as I feel it's just a handicap put in place to hide limited content and uninspired systems which SHOULD be leading to immergent gameplay.
I also despise FFA PvP as it has been implemented in this genre thus far.
So if I were to make a difficult, challenging AAA MMORPG it wouldn't have levels/skills to grind for months/years and it would not have FFA PvP (at least not like we've ever seen it before)
So would those two things cut those "millions" of potential players down to hundreds of thousands? tens of thousads?
Get my point?
I think I see what you're getting at, but I disagree that designing your game to suit the lowest common denominator is always the best idea. Just for the simple reason of market segmentation.
If you have a game like WoW that is dominating the market, then it can be inferred that there are different segments of WoW's market base that prefer different things. If you try to make a game that appeals to "everyone" like WoW does, then you have very tough competition. You don't have anything really "unique" to attract a specific kind of person, and you're trying to compete for all market segments, directly against the WoW giant.
If instead, you target a specific market segment (like "casuals" or "challenege seekers") then your game has a better chance of winning those players from WoW. For the simple reason that it is more tailored to their tastes.
Hmmm, I have a few counter arguments to your points.
First, Dark Souls is a sequel. People basically knew what they were getting into when they bought it because they have probably either played Demon Souls before, or heard about what it's like. If people were quitting Demon Souls left and right because the death penalty made the game not "fun" for them, then Dark Souls would not have sold well.
But that's not what happened. Dark Souls sold even better than Demon Souls. So well in fact, that many stores ran out of stock.
Second, an MMORPG has to remain fun for someone to keep playing, true. And one would think that frustrations from a death penalty would make the game "not fun" and so people would quit. And I'm sure this happens.
But think about the other side of the coin. When the game has virtually no penalty for failure, and combat is relatively easy, everything just turns into a grind. When I play WoW or any game like it, I'm never really worried. If I die, it's a 2-3 minute walk back to my corpse and I'm back in action. This may sound all well and good, but the game loses me.
This lack of concern, this indifference, permeates my entire play experience. It just turns into a steady grind where I watch my exp bar increase. I never approach situations cautiously because the penalty for dying is trivial. There's no reason for caution, or fear, or excitement, or jubilation, because there is nothing at risk.
On the other hand, when I play Dark Souls, I almost cry with relief everytime I find another bonfire (save point) just because I know so much is at stake.
So in conclusion, I would much rather experience the jubilation of success along with the pain and frustration of failure that goes along with a harsh death penalty; then just the cold placid grind that goes along with hardly any death penalty at all. I know not everyone is like this, but I think there are more gamers that feel like I do than many would think. If there weren't, Dark Souls and Demon Souls would have flopped.
I didn't say it couldn't or shouldn't be done, I was just pointing out a problem a company may face when trying to create a highly funded MMO like this in todays market.
Many games in the their early stages (post eq) have attempted things like corpse runs, XP/Loot loss etc.. Due to feedback more often than not these features have been removed in favor of less penalty. Which says a lot about the topic we're discussing right now.
Is there a market for a more hardcore experience? Of course, there has and will always be, Dark Souls is obvious proof of that. However that doesn't exactly say there's a huge MMO market for this sort of thing.
Challenging Ai is something missing from MMO's, if it's a challenge you're looking for in this department, MMO's have a long way to go. I wouldn't even say it's really the fault of the developers in this area, more the tech and know how they're working with at present. This is also the point I was making about game-play in MMO's, and why it doesn't lend itself well to challenge.
The way in which challenge has always been presented in MMO's (both then and now) is simply adding higher stats and more hp to an enemy. The challnege really just boils down to how long it takes something to drop. The only exceptions have been handled in instances, this says to me it's a tech problem they face here rather than being unwilling to offer something more.
It all boils down to what's going on under the hood. Look at Elder Scrolls games as an example. Would you call that AI challenging, and dynamic? I know I wouldn't. Yet that's the price they pay for having so many different systems running. A game like Dark Souls drops a lot of the deeper RPG elements of an Elder Scrolls game and replaces them with a better combat system as well as a little more advanced AI.
I guess the question really boils down to what do they drop from the current MMO in scope in order to offer a more robust AI?
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
I've been reading through this thread because I am a big fan of the Souls series, so maybe I'm a fanboi, but I agree with the OP. A few notes on comments I wanted to reply to:
1. Someone mentioned that the Souls games are so difficult that you have to "cheat", either by reading up strategies or abusing ingame things such as z-axis AI, game mechanics, range etc. Well I have no problem with this at all, I know a lot of people here liked the older games (EQ specifically, UO to some extent) and maybe they forgot all the "cheating" that happened in these games to combat difficult game mechnics.
It's been stated that things like FD pulling was never actually intended, but was invented to get around difficult game combat. Kiting as a druid, bard. Reverse kiting as a necro, all these in EQ were ways to combat difficulty, or were they "cheating" because the game wasn't intended to be played this way? Just ask Fansy about "cheating" and how enjoyable it is.
2. MMO's endgame being challenging is a matter of opinion, some people don't find "move out of fire" to be challenging.
3. NES RPGs just requiring you to be patient may be true, but NES games in general were very unforgiving (even the original Super Mario Bros you died in 2 hits maximum TO ANYTHING, not just bosses)
4. The Souls series is much more about learning through failure than anything, when I run through a die to some normal mobs because they have torches and fire deals a lot of dmg, well next time you know to be more cautious and you LEARN from your mistakes. This is very similar to the way NES games were played (see Super Mario Bros again).
5. Warmaker had a great way of summing up how you play Souls, "Is it worth it right now to try this?". You need to learn what the different monsters are capable of, and even if you have a guide helping you you still need to see it for yourselve to understand how to defend yourself.
6. Elocke mentioned that not everyone wants this kind of challenege and that is very true. But it seems like in MMOs we do not have this sort of challenge anywhere, even if the amount of people wanting this type of game is under 500,000 I still feel like that is a viable market to create a game for and aim for something about 100k-200k subs.
Call me a fanboi of the series if you will, but I enjoy games that make me think about what I am doing and reflect on mistakes I have made in the past. Trying new things and exploring new areas is often rewarding and extremely dangerous. But the Souls series has been the most rewarding game I've played in probably 10 years.
"They essentially want to say 'Correlation proves Causation' when it's just not true." - Sovrath
Comments
I'm not discrediting Dark Souls (or Demon's Souls) but both games are only difficult because it's entirely foreign to the player on purpose. There is no other way to play and win at the game other than to lose (unless you like to spoil things by reading walkthroughs and strategy guides). Unavoidable or unknowable difficulties aren't my cup of tea any more - those games went out with the systems of the 90s as far as I'm concerned.
Though I'm all for challenge but there are better ways to present it, I think.
Hmmm, I have a few counter arguments to your points.
First, Dark Souls is a sequel. People basically knew what they were getting into when they bought it because they have probably either played Demon Souls before, or heard about what it's like. If people were quitting Demon Souls left and right because the death penalty made the game not "fun" for them, then Dark Souls would not have sold well.
But that's not what happened. Dark Souls sold even better than Demon Souls. So well in fact, that many stores ran out of stock.
Second, an MMORPG has to remain fun for someone to keep playing, true. And one would think that frustrations from a death penalty would make the game "not fun" and so people would quit. And I'm sure this happens.
But think about the other side of the coin. When the game has virtually no penalty for failure, and combat is relatively easy, everything just turns into a grind. When I play WoW or any game like it, I'm never really worried. If I die, it's a 2-3 minute walk back to my corpse and I'm back in action. This may sound all well and good, but the game loses me.
This lack of concern, this indifference, permeates my entire play experience. It just turns into a steady grind where I watch my exp bar increase. I never approach situations cautiously because the penalty for dying is trivial. There's no reason for caution, or fear, or excitement, or jubilation, because there is nothing at risk.
On the other hand, when I play Dark Souls, I almost cry with relief everytime I find another bonfire (save point) just because I know so much is at stake.
So in conclusion, I would much rather experience the jubilation of success along with the pain and frustration of failure that goes along with a harsh death penalty; then just the cold placid grind that goes along with hardly any death penalty at all. I know not everyone is like this, but I think there are more gamers that feel like I do than many would think. If there weren't, Dark Souls and Demon Souls would have flopped.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
Well the good thing is we have variety in the video game market so there's no need for anyone to "push" their views onto anyone else. Hopefully, there will be games to appease everyone's tastes.
That said...I think your assessment that the market would be "1/20th" of its size is bunk. For some reason, it seems like everyone who hates harsh death penalties or "frustrating" games feels like the rest of the world agrees with them and there's just this tiny niche of masochistic players that enjoy harsher death penalties.
I would like to refer you to this page: http://www.siliconera.com/2011/09/28/this-week-in-sales-dark-souls-sees-demon-sales-ninjas-infiltrate-3ds/.
You will note, that Dark Souls sold almost 280K copies in its first week...Gears of War 3 only sold about 56K in its first week.
You may not like harsh death penalties and "frustrating" games, but there are obviously people that do. I think Dark Souls debunked the myth that the majority of gamers won't play a game with a harsher death penalty.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
Completely wrong about Demon's / Dark Souls. They're not hard because they're trial and error based games. They're hard because it's very unforgiving for recklesness and mistakes. An ounce of caution, patience, and situational awareness (particularly new areas to you - egress points if things get really hairy) will carry you very far. Charging in headlong will usually get you killed in terrible ways. The big, nasty bosses have patterns for you to notice and exploit, but you have to defend / evade against some horrendous attacks to notice them. As a player and a fan of the predecessor, Demon's Souls also, they're games that make you actually consider, "Is it worth it right now to try this?" Risk and Reward are big themes of the titles, and they throw great heaps of both onto the player.
The developers for Demon's / Dark Souls are among those that, thankfully, haven't bought into the overly simplistic gaming of today: The "Press 'F' for action!!!" era of gaming.
You say you're into challenge, but you're just spamming the "F" key.
"I have only two out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." (First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, US Marine Corps, Soissons, 19 July 1918)
That said...I think your assessment that the market would be "1/20th" of its size is bunk. For some reason, it seems like everyone who hates harsh death penalties or "frustrating" games feels like the rest of the world agrees with them and there's just this tiny niche of masochistic players that enjoy harsher death penalties.
I would like to refer you to this page: http://www.siliconera.com/2011/09/28/this-week-in-sales-dark-souls-sees-demon-sales-ninjas-infiltrate-3ds/.
You will note, that Dark Souls sold almost 280K copies in its first week...Gears of War 3 only sold about 56K in its first week.
You may not like harsh death penalties and "frustrating" games, but there are obviously people that do. I think Dark Souls debunked the myth that the majority of gamers won't play a game with a harsher death penalty.
Rage sold more copies than Dark Souls and so did Fifa 12. If we're going to base overall gamer preferences on sales charts, having no death penalties at all and not running on many machines are features that make games sell even better than cranking the difficulty up.
I would like to see how quickly sales drop off for the game compared to other game's sales. Especially Rage. How well does cranking the difficulty up compare to a totally borked game experience in regards to monthly sales?
My opinion on mmorpg is that having more difficult encounters and having situations where you have to sneak around instead of charging in with guns blazing would be good. Increasing death penalties is not (in my opinion) a way to increase difficulty of content...it's just a way to exercise patience, nothing more.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I don't mind that you want challenge. Just remember that I don't. As long as both options are offered as equally as possible in our MMOs then we're golden. I hate when challenge is put above immersion/atmosphere or just normal progression mechanics. What I want is a "world" to explore hand crafted to perfection, or close to it. I also want meaningful and fun progression mechanics as well as alternatives to gameplay. Enough with the raid or die mentality. I challenge game developers to create an MMORPG where raiding isn't the focus at endgame. Just to see what they come up with.
Well thing is diffrent things are attractive to diffrent people. No surprise that hard, challanging on unforgiving (choose one, kinda based on personal definition) sold less copies than more casual games, especially huge brand like Fifa.
Still based on reception, precedesor sales (Demon Souls and that was PS3 exclusive) and initial sales, there is high propability that Dark Souls will be commercial success.
Only thing that this proves that there is still a market for hard, challanging on unforgiving games. On the one hand it showes that it is not as big as for easier games, on the other it shows that it is not as tiny niche as some people tell it is.
So imho even currently, some challanging, unforgiving, hard mmorpg could have commercial success, surely not on WoW scale, nothing evven close, but with potential to surpass many less successful 'easy' mmorpg's.
One thing, I really dislike when some people combine, challange = raids.
I don't really like raids. I don't mind them in game, as long as their rewards are not much better than from other sources. But they require way too much planning and time for me to participate in them, more than accidentaly filling for someone if I happen to have time (which happens really rarely like 1 per month max).
So I don't want ALL mmorpg's to start be challanging, I don't even want majority of them to be like that.
I just want SOME of them, small MINORITY of them, to be challanging and I am not speaking of really unfinished, featureless indie productions.
So just one or very few from 'bit bigger' productions to have challaning OPEN WORLD and normal dungeons.
Making challange by just putting very hard end game raid is bad design imo. Kinda ridiculous to make all game easy then put some ridiculous hard raid at the end, that just very small % of gamers have time to even attempt to do.
There are way to many variables to base overall preferences on sales charts as you say. But at the same time, since Dark Souls sold so well, I think it shows that the vast majority modern gamers are not completely averse to harsher death penalties as so many people seem to believe. If harsh death penalties were a deal breaker for most gamers, Dark Souls would have flopped.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
What I have heard from many sources (reviews, articles, previews, player testimonials, etc.) is that Dark Souls is "difficult" because of the need for 100% perfect execution of a memorized pattern/scenario.
So you die and die and die until you perfectly memorize the pattern and/or scenario to know exactly what to do when, exactly where to step, exactly what to use etc.
And yes, there is "skill" involved in the execution.
You know what that sounds like to me?
WOW raiding.
BAM!
/thread
Oh, I guess because "end-game" is only part of the game it doesn't count... apparently people want that level of difficulty from the first moment they ever log into the game all the way through.
Is that the quote "argument?"
Yes, because Gears of War 3 also had over a million pre-orders which don't count in that 56k box sales in the first week lol
So GoW3 sold at least 1.056 million copies...
"Sales of this final chapter in the Gears series topped 1.3 million at last tally and are expected to surpass the first two installments, which sold about 13 million copies combined."
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/gaming/story/2011-09-19/gears-of-war-3/50470880/1
Nice try though!
Where does that blog get it's numbers from? Fantasy land?
Well the good thing is we have variety in the video game market so there's no need for anyone to "push" their views onto anyone else. Hopefully, there will be games to appease everyone's tastes.
That said...I think your assessment that the market would be "1/20th" of its size is bunk. For some reason, it seems like everyone who hates harsh death penalties or "frustrating" games feels like the rest of the world agrees with them and there's just this tiny niche of masochistic players that enjoy harsher death penalties.
I would like to refer you to this page: http://www.siliconera.com/2011/09/28/this-week-in-sales-dark-souls-sees-demon-sales-ninjas-infiltrate-3ds/.
You will note, that Dark Souls sold almost 280K copies in its first week...Gears of War 3 only sold about 56K in its first week.
You may not like harsh death penalties and "frustrating" games, but there are obviously people that do. I think Dark Souls debunked the myth that the majority of gamers won't play a game with a harsher death penalty.
Rage sold more copies than Dark Souls and so did Fifa 12. If we're going to base overall gamer preferences on sales charts, having no death penalties at all and not running on many machines are features that make games sell even better than cranking the difficulty up.
I would like to see how quickly sales drop off for the game compared to other game's sales. Especially Rage. How well does cranking the difficulty up compare to a totally borked game experience in regards to monthly sales?
My opinion on mmorpg is that having more difficult encounters and having situations where you have to sneak around instead of charging in with guns blazing would be good. Increasing death penalties is not (in my opinion) a way to increase difficulty of content...it's just a way to exercise patience, nothing more.
There are way to many variables to base overall preferences on sales charts as you say. But at the same time, since Dark Souls sold so well, I think it shows that the vast majority modern gamers are not completely averse to harsher death penalties as so many people seem to believe. If harsh death penalties were a deal breaker for most gamers, Dark Souls would have flopped.
It is way too early to start using the phrase 'vast majority' when you look at the sales of Dark Souls. To use that phrase, they'd need to sell something like 6.5 Million boxes. Call of Duty has sold something like 13.7 Million boxes. Dark Souls is at a half million worldwide, including Japan, where it's sold the most copies.
I'm not saying anything at all about the quality of Dark Souls, but looking at their sales and relating that to what the 'vast majority' of gamers want is a reach, at best.
Rift sold more copies than Dark Souls in their first week. Rift hasn't even released worldwide yet. More people want what Rift offers than what Dark Souls offers. The vast majority of gamers want lite death penalties, hot button based skill attacks and tab sticky targeted combat. See? It's just as silly with my example.
It is a totally different story if you think that MMORPG, in your opinion would do better to have Dark Souls mechanics built in. I'm just saying that the sales of Dark Souls doesn't support that position...or any position in particular.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Why not have servers dedicated to the hardcore with difficult content and servers for the casual, care bear crowd. It a lot more work but I believe it would keep everybody happier. Maybe have the option to go to a harder server if things get too easy for you.
I actually didn't say that the vast majority of gamers WANTED harsh death penalties...just that the vast majority aren't completed turned OFF by harsh death penalties. Difference
.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
Well the good thing is we have variety in the video game market so there's no need for anyone to "push" their views onto anyone else. Hopefully, there will be games to appease everyone's tastes.
That said...I think your assessment that the market would be "1/20th" of its size is bunk. For some reason, it seems like everyone who hates harsh death penalties or "frustrating" games feels like the rest of the world agrees with them and there's just this tiny niche of masochistic players that enjoy harsher death penalties.
I would like to refer you to this page: http://www.siliconera.com/2011/09/28/this-week-in-sales-dark-souls-sees-demon-sales-ninjas-infiltrate-3ds/.
You will note, that Dark Souls sold almost 280K copies in its first week...Gears of War 3 only sold about 56K in its first week.
You may not like harsh death penalties and "frustrating" games, but there are obviously people that do. I think Dark Souls debunked the myth that the majority of gamers won't play a game with a harsher death penalty.
Rage sold more copies than Dark Souls and so did Fifa 12. If we're going to base overall gamer preferences on sales charts, having no death penalties at all and not running on many machines are features that make games sell even better than cranking the difficulty up.
I would like to see how quickly sales drop off for the game compared to other game's sales. Especially Rage. How well does cranking the difficulty up compare to a totally borked game experience in regards to monthly sales?
My opinion on mmorpg is that having more difficult encounters and having situations where you have to sneak around instead of charging in with guns blazing would be good. Increasing death penalties is not (in my opinion) a way to increase difficulty of content...it's just a way to exercise patience, nothing more.
There are way to many variables to base overall preferences on sales charts as you say. But at the same time, since Dark Souls sold so well, I think it shows that the vast majority modern gamers are not completely averse to harsher death penalties as so many people seem to believe. If harsh death penalties were a deal breaker for most gamers, Dark Souls would have flopped.
It is way too early to start using the phrase 'vast majority' when you look at the sales of Dark Souls. To use that phrase, they'd need to sell something like 6.5 Million boxes. Call of Duty has sold something like 13.7 Million boxes. Dark Souls is at a half million worldwide, including Japan, where it's sold the most copies.
I'm not saying anything at all about the quality of Dark Souls, but looking at their sales and relating that to what the 'vast majority' of gamers want is a reach, at best.
Rift sold more copies than Dark Souls in their first week. Rift hasn't even released worldwide yet. More people want what Rift offers than what Dark Souls offers. The vast majority of gamers want lite death penalties, hot button based skill attacks and tab sticky targeted combat. See? It's just as silly with my example.
It is a totally different story if you think that MMORPG, in your opinion would do better to have Dark Souls mechanics built in. I'm just saying that the sales of Dark Souls doesn't support that position...or any position in particular.
I actually didn't say that the vast majority of gamers WANTED harsh death penalties...just that the vast majority aren't completed turned OFF by harsh death penalties. Difference
Based on the sales of Dark Souls, you can't infer anything about the 'vast majority' of gamers. At all. Dark Souls has not sold to the vast majority of gamers, or the majority of gamers. They've sold to a minority of gamers, most of them in Japan, where harder games, including harsh death penalties, sell very well.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
500k people, mostly in Japan, does not = vast majority by any stretch of the word... at all.. ever...
The vast majority of MMO gamers play more lenient, low penalty games like WoW.
The vast majority of gamers play nothing but facebook games or online hearts/poker and don't own a console of any kind.
Just giving some perspective...
The vast majority of gamers ARE turned OFF by harsh death penalties.
FACT.
Hahah thanks, I did think it was very "odd" that GoW3 would have sold so poory given that it's a mega-hyped franchise with lots of loyal followers.
Regardless though, the fact that a hardcore game like Dark Souls, with not that much marketing, sold 250K copies in its first week is impressive IMO.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
Let me rephrase and just say that the market for gamers that are not turned off by harsh death penalties is large enough to be profitable for a AAA MMORPG.
That is really what I meant when I said "vast majority." I'm just saying that the market for gamers like this isn't the tiny niche that a lot of people think it is.
Also here is a link that shows Dark Souls worldwide sales: http://n4g.com/news/864308/worldwide-sales-of-dark-souls-top-690k-ps3-version-leads-the-way/com.
690K so far. Definitely not the vast majority of gamers, but definitely not a tiny niche either.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
This part of what are mmos missing has been said 1000000s of times.
That's a fair point.
Kind of
Hard to make a AAA MMO with the budget neccessary for an expected audience of 500k.
I guess it depends on how you define AAA though, to be honest.
Like, Rift was/is probably one of the only truly AAA MMO's to be released in quite some time.
Polished, relatively "complete," marketed and distributed well across many regions, etc.
6 months in and still going strong (comparitively) etc.
I would not say by any stretch of the word that FFXIV/AoC/WAR/Aion/STO/DCUO or anything else 2005-2011 were truly AAA MMOs.
I think LOTRO became AAA over time, but missed its "window" and is now easily a AAA F2P MMO.
Know what I mean?
AAA is a term that is used OFTEN on this site, but for what? What is the true definition?
AAA should mean quality. I think you're pretty much correct by calling Rift a AAA mmo.
To add my 2 cents I think the for a death penalty to work it depends on how the game is designed. There are some MMOs in which it works (UO, Eve) and some in which it was complete junk (FFXI). In Demon Souls and Dark Souls it works well with the way the whole game and it's progression has been set up.
My theme song.
"AAA" is debateable for sure. When I use it, I just mean a well funded game. To me, WAR and Aion were AAA MMORPGs that just didn't last long. Whereas Darkfall and MO are not "AAA." So "AAA" doesn't have much to do with the "quality" of a game when I use it...just its financial backing. I guess by "AAA" I just mean "not indie"
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Also, Demon Souls sold over 1 million copies during its lifetime and I think 1 million is plenty for a AAA MMORPG. But that point doesn't really mean much. Dark Souls and Demon Souls are console single player RPGs, you can't really look at their sales numbers and say that "this many people will buy an MMORPG with a harsher death penalty." The only thing I think you can glean from it is that a large amount of gamers DID buy a game with a harsh death penalty, so the feature isn't as despised as many think.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
Again, fair points sir. +1 interwebs for good discussion!
I more consider AAA a mark of quality, not simply funding - hence my previous "definition."
I have no doubt there are millions of gamers who would enjoy a more difficult/challenging MMORPG, but that aspect of the game is only one factor out of many that pull people towards or pushes them away from a particular MMO title.
For instance, I'd appreciate a MMO with much more of that old-school "open world" PvE that makes the leveling up process much more of an adventure.
Some would call that "sandbox" and I'd say the above mentioned would likely be included in most sandbox designs.
But I despise grinding as I feel it's just a handicap put in place to hide limited content and uninspired systems which SHOULD be leading to immergent gameplay.
I also despise FFA PvP as it has been implemented in this genre thus far.
So if I were to make a difficult, challenging AAA MMORPG it wouldn't have levels/skills to grind for months/years and it would not have FFA PvP (at least not like we've ever seen it before)
So would those two things cut those "millions" of potential players down to hundreds of thousands? tens of thousads?
Get my point?
I think I see what you're getting at, but I disagree that designing your game to suit the lowest common denominator is always the best idea. Just for the simple reason of market segmentation.
If you have a game like WoW that is dominating the market, then it can be inferred that there are different segments of WoW's market base that prefer different things. If you try to make a game that appeals to "everyone" like WoW does, then you have very tough competition. You don't have anything really "unique" to attract a specific kind of person, and you're trying to compete for all market segments, directly against the WoW giant.
If instead, you target a specific market segment (like "casuals" or "challenege seekers") then your game has a better chance of winning those players from WoW. For the simple reason that it is more tailored to their tastes.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
I didn't say it couldn't or shouldn't be done, I was just pointing out a problem a company may face when trying to create a highly funded MMO like this in todays market.
Many games in the their early stages (post eq) have attempted things like corpse runs, XP/Loot loss etc.. Due to feedback more often than not these features have been removed in favor of less penalty. Which says a lot about the topic we're discussing right now.
Is there a market for a more hardcore experience? Of course, there has and will always be, Dark Souls is obvious proof of that. However that doesn't exactly say there's a huge MMO market for this sort of thing.
Challenging Ai is something missing from MMO's, if it's a challenge you're looking for in this department, MMO's have a long way to go. I wouldn't even say it's really the fault of the developers in this area, more the tech and know how they're working with at present. This is also the point I was making about game-play in MMO's, and why it doesn't lend itself well to challenge.
The way in which challenge has always been presented in MMO's (both then and now) is simply adding higher stats and more hp to an enemy. The challnege really just boils down to how long it takes something to drop. The only exceptions have been handled in instances, this says to me it's a tech problem they face here rather than being unwilling to offer something more.
It all boils down to what's going on under the hood. Look at Elder Scrolls games as an example. Would you call that AI challenging, and dynamic? I know I wouldn't. Yet that's the price they pay for having so many different systems running. A game like Dark Souls drops a lot of the deeper RPG elements of an Elder Scrolls game and replaces them with a better combat system as well as a little more advanced AI.
I guess the question really boils down to what do they drop from the current MMO in scope in order to offer a more robust AI?
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
I've been reading through this thread because I am a big fan of the Souls series, so maybe I'm a fanboi, but I agree with the OP. A few notes on comments I wanted to reply to:
1. Someone mentioned that the Souls games are so difficult that you have to "cheat", either by reading up strategies or abusing ingame things such as z-axis AI, game mechanics, range etc. Well I have no problem with this at all, I know a lot of people here liked the older games (EQ specifically, UO to some extent) and maybe they forgot all the "cheating" that happened in these games to combat difficult game mechnics.
It's been stated that things like FD pulling was never actually intended, but was invented to get around difficult game combat. Kiting as a druid, bard. Reverse kiting as a necro, all these in EQ were ways to combat difficulty, or were they "cheating" because the game wasn't intended to be played this way? Just ask Fansy about "cheating" and how enjoyable it is.
2. MMO's endgame being challenging is a matter of opinion, some people don't find "move out of fire" to be challenging.
3. NES RPGs just requiring you to be patient may be true, but NES games in general were very unforgiving (even the original Super Mario Bros you died in 2 hits maximum TO ANYTHING, not just bosses)
4. The Souls series is much more about learning through failure than anything, when I run through a die to some normal mobs because they have torches and fire deals a lot of dmg, well next time you know to be more cautious and you LEARN from your mistakes. This is very similar to the way NES games were played (see Super Mario Bros again).
5. Warmaker had a great way of summing up how you play Souls, "Is it worth it right now to try this?". You need to learn what the different monsters are capable of, and even if you have a guide helping you you still need to see it for yourselve to understand how to defend yourself.
6. Elocke mentioned that not everyone wants this kind of challenege and that is very true. But it seems like in MMOs we do not have this sort of challenge anywhere, even if the amount of people wanting this type of game is under 500,000 I still feel like that is a viable market to create a game for and aim for something about 100k-200k subs.
Call me a fanboi of the series if you will, but I enjoy games that make me think about what I am doing and reflect on mistakes I have made in the past. Trying new things and exploring new areas is often rewarding and extremely dangerous. But the Souls series has been the most rewarding game I've played in probably 10 years.
"They essentially want to say 'Correlation proves Causation' when it's just not true." - Sovrath