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Raising the Difficulty???
jaffrojones
Member Posts: 42
I've been thinking about this for a while lately, and I was wondering what other people thought. One of the problems I find most often lately is the ease in which the mmo's being released today are. I don't feel any sense of accomplishment when I do things. Acheivments mean nothing to me when I can sleepwalk through the process of obtaining them.
I understand the design of simplicity in gaming and ease of use as far as design and why they do it, but why does this have to translate into descrease in difficulty?
One example I can think of off the top of my head is the Barrow-downs in Lotro. When the game first came out, way before the "free-to-play" change, this was an area that you wouldn't go into without 2 or 3 of your friends. I'm not talking about the instance, but just the area outside. Man, was it hard! When you killed things in there it was awesome and rewarding. I was playing in that are a couple of months ago and was on comm with a friend of mine, he passed me by while he was doing something and I said, "are you going to fight with me", and his response was, "Why, do you need help"? I thought to myself, no, not really.
I guess the whole reason I'm writing this is to ask, can't the developers keep at least one server open that is hard? Please? Wouldn't more people like the feel like when you are done with a session that it actually felt like an adventure instead of just pressing buttons?
Comments
If a game is going to be difficult, then it should offer ways to circumvent those difficulties, either through twinking or kiting or clever AoE builds, or other (legal by the ToS) means.
I despise grinding my way through same level mobs with no means to attack and kill much higher level ones, so if it's also going to be difficult and presumably therefore more time consuming, I want ways around it, if not for my main character, than for my inevitable legion of alts.
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
~Albert Einstein
I don't agree with you on the difficulty being as to force grouping but I will like much harder and fast paced PVE content in lower levels. The only game that had some fun at the lower levels for me was Age of conan, even wow which I believe has the most fast paced combat falls flat and only picks up much later.
When you play some quality single player games, the AI of MMO games seems ancient.
I have no such problem playing Vanguard.As for lotro,it has been dumb down to the point of being a joke,i two remember the barrow downs.
Turn it around and ask the developers to make one easy server and not to gimp the rest of the servers down to an easy level.then the whiners would complain that they only have 1 server that they are FORCED to play on.
Currently bored with MMO's.
More group quests and places with elite mobs
while leveling doesnt make game harder just
a pain in the ass coz u need a lot of time to find a group.
I absolutely agree with you. Currently I would advise you to do a BAM fight in tera. Soloing a BAM is fun and not as easy as your usual MMO content.
Overall I am not impressed by the difficulty of MMOs but I do understand the reasoning from a publishers standpoint:
- 4 of 5 MMO players do not have any skill. They will fail at getting through hard content.
- Console games and their limitations force super-ficial and easy gameplay onto the PC players.
- Hard content can be tiresome if you are forced to repeat it.
- Casual players are not looking for challenges. They are looking for easy distractions with fast rewards.
- A game with different difficulties would create a two tier gaming population. Those who can and those who cannot overcome hard challenges. This way the low skilled players are being forced to see how poorly they play. Noone would like that.
In short: Give the players the illusion of a challenge with fast success and make sure that nothing disturbes the bubble.
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Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Turn it around and ask the developers to make one easy server and not to gimp the rest of the servers down to an easy level.then the whiners would complain that they only have 1 server that they are FORCED to play on.
Give them more servers, but have them called normal and easy, not normal and hard.I agree with you that spamming all day to find a group can be tiresome, but as the games get easier and easier they might as well not be multiplayer. Afterall, doesn't the MM in MMO stand for massively multiplayer? I don't know anyone who can't solo to cap in WoW.
I don't mean to get in a WoW argument and how it is ruining gameplay, I do see why and even think that there should be some level of ease of difficulty for casual gamers, but I still want the need to group. Yes, you DO need to group to do instances, but I find that 95% of the time I'm playing alone. I don't like to, and don't want to. I do like people and have no problem grouping, but I just don't find it necessary most of the times across the board in all games, not just WoW.
Aren't worlds suppose to be dangerous outside of towns? I mean, traditionally. If we assume that the invention of MMO's come out of Dungeons & Dragons, and I do think that is a safe assumption, then shouldn't you NEED to group? If you've played D&D in your life, when was the last time you were like, I'll just do this alone today?
I believe you are suppose to have a full compliment of characthers to help you survive.
This is one of the few things I like about instanced MMO's right now. All major MMOs on the market (and upcoming) right now are brain dead easy. A heavily instanced game like STO or Vindictus which have difficulty options allow you to make the game a better challenge for those looking for a harder game.
I would support a server with buffed mobs in pretty much any game, but it's unlikely that any MMO is going to bother trying to do something like that.
I'd rather they named difficulty levels like in the Wolfenstein 3d game
Can I play, Daddy?- Very Easy
Don't hurt me- Still pretty easy
Bring 'em on- The default difficulty
I am Death Incarnate!- Extremely difficult!
I would very much prefer diffrent difficulty servers instead of heavy instanced world since while instances can allow you to chosse 'difficulty' , at same time instancing practically kills many other features and 'feel' of a mmorpg.
For example when I tried Vindictus it was like playing some weird single / co-op game. Don't have to say that it did not keep me playing this game for long.
Other thing is many mmorpg's are getting more and more instanced / phased.
One of things that explain why I don't play any mmorpg atm thought...
One of the most entertaining things i do in Darkfall is assist new player in the starter area. Why is this so entertaining? Well the mobs "aggro" and ai work in such a foreign manner that its a blast to watch people who say "dude i played wow for 5 years and was top rated ect" get their ass handed to them by lowly goblins.
Its not that they are hard mobs, or that the AI is really fantastic, its just so diffrent in the way it works that its so entertaining to watch people struggle with something difficult.
Im just so sick to death of mobs with tiny aggro range, predictable styles of attack, and a death penalty that results in a free trip to town with a small repair bill. Theres no difficulty just...gear/level checks. Cant be those level 30 mobs at 25 come back at 28 with new gear. Theres no learning how to play, and its by design, they want any idiot to hop in feel at home and start the race to endgame.
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Absolutely agree with you. I'd pay double to play on a server like that. The best ruleset server I ever played on was Firiona Vie (EQ1) - it was supposed to be a roleplaying server but not many roleplayed. it had the following rules which I think contributed to a lot to the difficulty:
- Trivial Loot Code and Exp. If mobs were green you didn't get loot so no high levels farming loot.
- Single character per account. No alts on the same account.
- No transfers of equipment to or from the server
- no trade / no drop items could be traded
- No global chat
- No automatic common languages
Of course they then ruined their own lands by relaxing some of those rules and adding a bunch of other crap which is why I left but it was pretty awesome when it was pure.
The problem is already solved, at least for raids.
That is .. to have different difficulties. WOW has that. DDO has that.