Originally posted by Knotwood Raid seemed apropriate in order to express the level of difficulty and rewards that are given.
Raids are no more difficult than dungeons, just a larger amount of people. As I said in an earlier post, the difficulty of raids comes from dealing with unskilled players, not the content itself.
So your also saying that DEVS like Nick Konkle couldnt possibly make content for solo players that would be just as hard as a full 12+ person raid?
THIS SOUNDS LIKE ANOTHER CHALLENGE DIRECTLY TO YOU MR. KONKLE! LETS SEE YOU PROVE THEM WRONG!
...What? This makes no sense to me...
IF raids are no more difficult then dungeons to you, then why should you care if someone in a solo dungeon gets the same reward?? Just because the number of players that did it?
...What?! This makes even less sense! I think rewards should be equal across the board. I really don't see what either of these posts has to do with anything I have said. My issue is with the fact that solo raiding is a complete contradiction. I have no problem with solo players having the same power level as raiders. I don't know where you are getting this. Raids have never been any more difficult than dungeons content wise, the difficulty comes from having more people with different skill levels, not the content itself.
Your posts make no sense, I'm starting to think you are just here to stir up drama/trouble.
Currently Playing: ESO and FFXIV Have played: You name it If you mention rose tinted glasses, you better be referring to Mitch Hedberg.
The reason you do not see this is that most MMORPGs are not made to have content that is actually challenging for a single player given the RPG and interface mechanics of the game.
Generally, in an MMORPG, either you can kill something or you can't and there is very little skills involved. The only time you see exceptions are when you have extremely excellent players exploiting (in a legal way) mechanics that are "peculiar" for a particular skill or boss. For example I have seen a video of a guy in LOTRO solo the Cold Bear Raid boss using a Loremaster basically taking advantage of the fact that while Cold Bear is immune to most CC he can be snared. So basically he snared and kited a raid boss for like 2 hours straight and eventually won.
This sounds boring but he basically had to be exactly on point for 2 hours straight with very little margin or error due to CDs so its quite impressive.
However most MMORPGs purposely deny the possibility of such gameplay. A lot of "skill" in action RPGs comes down to planning/strategy, movement, timing and CC the rest is mostly math and making sure your math lines up.
In the case of bosses most the "skill" portion of the RPG are actually purposely negated and most of the players goood defensive reactive abilities are also heavily reduced. Thus solo boss fights in MMORPGs are pale comparisons to real games, because they are intentionally neutered.
This is why you are unlikely to see such a thing. The whole "risk vs reward" or "raiding is harder" is complete an utter bullshit. There are plenty of essentially maximally challenging single player boss fights in the gaming genre. Some are legendarily hard. Solo play in MMORPGs is not "easy" it is simply neutered to the point of mostly being math except in a few rare exceptions.
Thus you should not ask for hard and reward solo content. Rather you should ask for interesting solo gameplay that allows for interesting and skillful combat without interefering with group mechanics. Because then they could actual deliver quality solo content.
As it stands right now, the only solo content an MMORPG can deliver is a grind for larger or more ideal numbers.
So your also saying that DEVS like Nick Konkle couldnt possibly make content for solo players that would be just as hard as a full 12+ person raid?
I've no idea who Nick Konkle is, but this is basically correct.
With all other things being equal, if you take the same nominal difficulty for an encounter, and then on top of the encounter's difficulty you also add organization, collaboration and coordination, then the encounter that has those latter 3 will be more difficult.
Do this mental exercise: Imagine the most difficult solo encounter you can imagine. Define it as however you want. Got it? Ok, now imagine two people doing that encounter (solo) in side by side rooms. Now, add to whatever encounter was before the condition that both of them have to kill the encounter within 3 seconds of each other. This new two-person encounter is now more difficult than whatever the solo encounter was, because two people need to coordinate - and this is regardless of how difficult the first encounter was. If it had difficulty "50" and you raise that difficulty to "100", the difficulty of the two-person encounter will still be more.
"Id rather work on something with great potential than on fulfilling a promise of mediocrity."
- Raph Koster
Tried: AO,EQ,EQ2,DAoC,SWG,AA,SB,HZ,CoX,PS,GA,TR,IV,GnH,EVE, PP,DnL,WAR,MxO,SWG,FE,VG,AoC,DDO,LoTRO,Rift,TOR,Aion,Tera,TSW,GW2,DCUO,CO,STO Favourites: AO,SWG,EVE,TR,LoTRO,TSW,EQ2, Firefall Currently Playing: ESO
...What?! This makes even less sense! I think rewards should be equal across the board. I really don't see what either of these posts has to do with anything I have said. My issue is with the fact that solo raiding is a complete contradiction. I have no problem with solo players having the same power level as raiders. I don't know where you are getting this. Raids have never been any more difficult than dungeons content wise, the difficulty comes from having more people with different skill levels, not the content itself.
Your posts make no sense, I'm starting to think you are just here to stir up drama/trouble.
Sorry, I'm swinging a two handed sword around here. Dint mean to hit you Lydia! Please for forgive me.
So your also saying that DEVS like Nick Konkle couldnt possibly make content for solo players that would be just as hard as a full 12+ person raid?
I've no idea who Nick Konkle is, but this is basically correct.
With all other things being equal, if you take the same nominal difficulty for an encounter, and then on top of the encounter's difficulty you also add organization, collaboration and coordination, then the encounter that has those latter 3 will be more difficult.
Do this mental exercise: Imagine the most difficult solo encounter you can imagine. Define it as however you want. Got it? Ok, now imagine two people doing that encounter (solo) in side by side rooms. Now, add to whatever encounter was before the condition that both of them have to kill the encounter within 3 seconds of each other. This new two-person encounter is now more difficult than whatever the solo encounter was, because two people need to coordinate - and this is regardless of how difficult the first encounter was. If it had difficulty "50" and you raise that difficulty to "100", the difficulty of the two-person encounter will still be more.
This is entirely wrong.
For each individual, performing in a phalanx at a high level, is NOT more challenging than boxing a single person at a high level.
An excellent boxer or wrestler or UFC fighter is presented with just as much challenge as anyone in a large unit of a fight. However the nature of the challenge is quite different as is the nature of the danger.
An individual can only do so many things, in so many ways. Just because a situation has more things going on does not mean its more "challenging" it just means that person has to be more spread out and aware of what is generally going on.
The amazing concentration that exists in a boxing match between two combatants is, just as, if not more challenging, but in a war battle where you are working with 20 other people it would also get you killed not because that is more challenging but because it has different demands.
Let me make this clear, there is no way you can make something more challenging than a one on one fight between two maximally skilled people. It is not possible. You can change the nature of the conflict but you cannot make it more challenging for that person.
This idea that "raids are harder because they are more complex" is just plain ignorant. it is also misguided as that line of thought would only apply to the computer CPU but DOES NOT apply to individuals as actors in the situation. Sadly computer devs who should know better, since they should have some grounding in complexity analysis, rarely understand this fact.
I came from an Asheron's Call background, the very first MMO that actually embraced soloing so of course I would love to have solo adventu8res and hard challenging content.
Sandbox means open world, non-linear gaming PERIOD!
Subscription Gaming, especially MMO gaming is a Cash grab bigger then the most P2W cash shop!
Bring Back Exploration and lengthy progression times. RPG's have always been about the Journey not the destination!!!
So your also saying that DEVS like Nick Konkle couldnt possibly make content for solo players that would be just as hard as a full 12+ person raid?
I've no idea who Nick Konkle is, but this is basically correct.
With all other things being equal, if you take the same nominal difficulty for an encounter, and then on top of the encounter's difficulty you also add organization, collaboration and coordination, then the encounter that has those latter 3 will be more difficult.
Do this mental exercise: Imagine the most difficult solo encounter you can imagine. Define it as however you want. Got it? Ok, now imagine two people doing that encounter (solo) in side by side rooms. Now, add to whatever encounter was before the condition that both of them have to kill the encounter within 3 seconds of each other. This new two-person encounter is now more difficult than whatever the solo encounter was, because two people need to coordinate - and this is regardless of how difficult the first encounter was. If it had difficulty "50" and you raise that difficulty to "100", the difficulty of the two-person encounter will still be more.
For each individual, performing in a phalanx at a high level, is NOT more challenging than boxing a single person at a high level.
You are comparing DIFFERENT things. I am comparing the same thing.
The amazing concentration that exists in a boxing match between two combatants is, just as, if not more challenging, but in a war battle where you are working with 20 other people it would also get you killed not because that is more challenging but because it has different demands.
Right, but if you take two boxing matches, each with its "amazing concentration" and now ask the boxers - in addition to the existing challenge to also BOTH win their resxpective matches at the same time, the challenge becomes greater than just the challenge of each one winning their match.
We're talking about developers designing something from the ground up to be difficult for one person. my point is that no matter what a developer designs, if they take that same design (which they usually do in MMOs) and add to it hte need to coordinate, it will immediately become tougher than what was designed for one person.
"Id rather work on something with great potential than on fulfilling a promise of mediocrity."
- Raph Koster
Tried: AO,EQ,EQ2,DAoC,SWG,AA,SB,HZ,CoX,PS,GA,TR,IV,GnH,EVE, PP,DnL,WAR,MxO,SWG,FE,VG,AoC,DDO,LoTRO,Rift,TOR,Aion,Tera,TSW,GW2,DCUO,CO,STO Favourites: AO,SWG,EVE,TR,LoTRO,TSW,EQ2, Firefall Currently Playing: ESO
So your also saying that DEVS like Nick Konkle couldnt possibly make content for solo players that would be just as hard as a full 12+ person raid?
I've no idea who Nick Konkle is, but this is basically correct.
With all other things being equal, if you take the same nominal difficulty for an encounter, and then on top of the encounter's difficulty you also add organization, collaboration and coordination, then the encounter that has those latter 3 will be more difficult.
Do this mental exercise: Imagine the most difficult solo encounter you can imagine. Define it as however you want. Got it? Ok, now imagine two people doing that encounter (solo) in side by side rooms. Now, add to whatever encounter was before the condition that both of them have to kill the encounter within 3 seconds of each other. This new two-person encounter is now more difficult than whatever the solo encounter was, because two people need to coordinate - and this is regardless of how difficult the first encounter was. If it had difficulty "50" and you raise that difficulty to "100", the difficulty of the two-person encounter will still be more.
Also let me make another point.
Some people claim "raids are harder because of other people".
No. Wrong. Raids are less likely to succeed because you depend on other people. If I personally perform at the best possible quality I can do, top notch legendary performance, yet the raid still fails because three other people screwed up.
Then that is that. Raid fails. But for me that failure has nothing to do with challenge, rather it was "bad luck". The only challenge there is that later on, we as a group would need to create some sort of consistency. There is a "social challenge". The solution is exactly the same as any person striving for solo excellence.
It a little thing called "practice". You that that thing that make "perfect".
But it is an inescapable fact that when I personally perform well yet we still fail I can only shrug my shoulders and realize that the content is not truly about challenge and in reality the "risk" can have almost nothing to do with me personally.
There are simpy a bunch more variables that are out of your control. This is not challenging. It may be rough. But its not challenging.
I can have a boxing match between two people and inside the boxing ring I can plant three land mines in random spots. That is rough and nasty. But did it make the actual match harder? No. Its just random death.
You can argue but in the raid example if everyone performs with excellence then you win. So what? You don't control other people. The best you can ever do is influence other people and makes guesses about their abilities and motives. That may be an interesting problem, but it is by no means the same thing as objectively winning something because of excellent performance.
Playing soccer is not harder than being a boxer. This is something everyone except MMORPG raiders understand on a fundamental level.
Yes, it should be in by default in a game that has solo lvling.
The whole aspect of an MMO that is a themepark with solo questing to build the character within the context of the MMO and story to make the charcter become more epic and a hero.
There is solo content at end game but those are dailies which are easy to do, sometimes there are small group heroics which can be soloed but most likely requiring raid gear to do it... and the rewards for dailies are just a precursor reward for raiding and is a grind.
By removing grinds and focusing on challenging content is what is required as proper end game for solo players and groups.
Why should a raid/instance be exclusive to groups only. When its part of the MMO story and sometimes the only challenging content with more than basic mechanics in the game.
It removes the reliance on groups which is good and bad. Bad with having to wait for gear grinds for other players to have equal gear to avoid so many wipes. Avoid difference in skill and avoid wipes. Avoid waiting for the right class.
In the end devs can reward groups differently as well. Reward guilds for raiding and then reward individuals with raid gear for doing the instance solo. It can also become good experience for any player that wants to practise for the raid.
So in effect there are two main reasons to have it; 1 . Allow average players to practise for groups. 2. Reward players for solo content that already exists in an MMO for the actually most complicated and detailed content in game as per quest/instance.
Too bad devs wont listen on this one... since it would be one hell of an act for them to balance if there is a trinity involved.
Write bad things that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on a piece of marble
So your also saying that DEVS like Nick Konkle couldnt possibly make content for solo players that would be just as hard as a full 12+ person raid?
I've no idea who Nick Konkle is, but this is basically correct.
With all other things being equal, if you take the same nominal difficulty for an encounter, and then on top of the encounter's difficulty you also add organization, collaboration and coordination, then the encounter that has those latter 3 will be more difficult.
Do this mental exercise: Imagine the most difficult solo encounter you can imagine. Define it as however you want. Got it? Ok, now imagine two people doing that encounter (solo) in side by side rooms. Now, add to whatever encounter was before the condition that both of them have to kill the encounter within 3 seconds of each other. This new two-person encounter is now more difficult than whatever the solo encounter was, because two people need to coordinate - and this is regardless of how difficult the first encounter was. If it had difficulty "50" and you raise that difficulty to "100", the difficulty of the two-person encounter will still be more.
For each individual, performing in a phalanx at a high level, is NOT more challenging than boxing a single person at a high level.
You are comparing DIFFERENT things. I am comparing the same thing.
The amazing concentration that exists in a boxing match between two combatants is, just as, if not more challenging, but in a war battle where you are working with 20 other people it would also get you killed not because that is more challenging but because it has different demands.
Right, but if you take two boxing matches, each with its "amazing concentration" and now ask the boxers - in addition to the existing challenge to also BOTH win their resxpective matches at the same time, the challenge becomes greater than just the challenge of each one winning their match.
We're talking about developers designing something from the ground up to be difficult for one person. my point is that no matter what a developer designs, if they take that same design (which they usually do in MMOs) and add to it hte need to coordinate, it will immediately become tougher than what was designed for one person.
Wrong. It will be become different, not harder. Individuals can only do so much.
Generally soldiers are piss poor swordsmen compared to duelists, they must concentrate on other far more important things because there are now other concerns.
All people who achieve excellence do it in only one way, a lifetime of practice. The nature of what you are doing will determine which things you practice often and which you only practice some.
This is the fundamental problem with raiders and why they are always wrong. This argument is just completely off base.
If you kept your brain the same size but suddenly gave you 100 arms. Would you suddenly be more challenged? No, you would be able to hold more things but have terrible manual dexterity and a shitty ability to use them in concert. You would boil everything down to the simplest possible operation you could because you can't deal with any overhead at all.
When you start multi tasking many things at once you simply become mediocre at all of them. Sometimes it is worthwhile to be mediocre at many things at once to achieve a larger goal. But being mediocre at many things is not more challenging than being excellent at one thing.
There is a reason that armies drill extremely simple things over and over again and treat recruits like idiots. Even the simplest of things become arduous in a large group setting. This doesn't mean things are overall harder. It make simple things harder.
A group as a whole never ever executes maneuvers on something even close to as compelx as individuals do.
You see. You have it backwards. The added complexity/wieght/overhead/(just plain randomness) fores groups into maneuvers and chains of events are much lower in total moves and much simpler in nature.
The over all challenge is the same. Simple moves are easier solo, but in the solo environment you can create a symphony of because of less overhead moves. The raids just play a kazoo, they just have a lot of people playing the same song on the kazoo at once. Which is still actually quite challenging, but it is just a kazoo.
The obvious counterpoint is, but what about when you have an entire raid capable of playing a symphony. That can only happen if the whole thing is planned.
THIS WILL NEVER EVER HAPPEN IN AN IMPROVISATIONAL ENVIRONMENT.
I repeat.
THIS WILL NEVER EVER HAPPEN IN AN IMPROVISATIONAL ENVIRONMENT.
Now ask any musician who knows what they are doing improvisation takes the most skill and knowledge of both music and your instrument.
There is no such thing as an improv orchestra of 80 people. It can't happen. It just blows up. But you can have it with 4 people and it can be pretty amazing.
No, but boxing as a team would be harder than boxing alone. Just like two soccer teams winning simultaneously would be harder than one soccer team winning on its own. But we're not talking about sports here, because sports are were not designed for the purpose of difficulty. No one sat down and said "hey, let's design the most difficult sport", that's not how boxing or soccer were born.
If you consider that things like teamwork, collaboration, leadership and organization do not take any skill and all come down to "being lucky", I can't really say anything to convince you otherwise. I just need to wait for you to live some more.
Any challenge designed for one person can be made more difficult by being designed for more than one. It can also be made easier by being designed for more than one. But when it comes to MMOs, anything that is designed is going to get reused as much as possible. So it goes back to the fact that even if a developer came up with something mindf**kingly hard to do as solo, another developer would simply grab that, add the need to coordinate to it and now have something that is more difficult "overall" and we'd back here saying "well, we need EVEN MORE challenging solo stuff".
"Id rather work on something with great potential than on fulfilling a promise of mediocrity."
- Raph Koster
Tried: AO,EQ,EQ2,DAoC,SWG,AA,SB,HZ,CoX,PS,GA,TR,IV,GnH,EVE, PP,DnL,WAR,MxO,SWG,FE,VG,AoC,DDO,LoTRO,Rift,TOR,Aion,Tera,TSW,GW2,DCUO,CO,STO Favourites: AO,SWG,EVE,TR,LoTRO,TSW,EQ2, Firefall Currently Playing: ESO
quickly and illicitly take something from (a place).
Please tell me where you are all getting raid = group? just because MMOs copy each other and put raids at end game for multiple people doesn't change the meaning of the word.
You can solo raid quite easily.
ESO is a poorly done online version of Skyrim, I do not consider it a Skyrim MMO because being a Skyrim fan, it just doesn't live up to the same standard as the single player game, so I, like many other Skyrim fans, play ESO like a single player game.
I would solo raid if it was available, i think it's a great idea, if I don't get something to do other than sit and stare at grass when I hit level cap, I will most likely leave and move on to something else, like I would once I finished a solo game and didn't feel like replaying it straight away after completion.
ESO is a very dumbed down version of Skyrim, so it's kind of fun playing it like a single player game and just pretending all the players running around are retarded Npcs and just play on ignoring them...
I will never take ESO seriously or treat it like a normal MMO after they butchered it to be a cheap rip off of Skyrim, but as I said, I will play it like a single player game until it gets boring or one of the other games I am waiting on gets released.
I would love to see something like single raiding or similar.
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what
it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience
because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in
the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you
playing an MMORPG?"
The whole argument seems to be "I dont wanna sit around and wait".
Instant gratification in other words. You want a constant stream of awesome and stimulation coming directly from your computer to your brain, without this, you get bored.
You want porn, not MMO's.
MMO's should, if anything, go slower. There should be downtimes where hardly anything is happening. MMO's are not movies, they are a world or life simulator to a degree. The heroes in movies need downtime to watch porn too, we just cant see it.
So true and so well said
Forum Post count does not = Game Intelligence or Knowledge it just shows how often people like to talk.
I'm standing in a one tree orchard next to a single seagull flock. There is no such thing as solo raiding. You are either soloing or raiding. It's simple numbers.
Wanting challenging, end game content that provides top tier rewards that can be done solo is exactly that. There is no raid involved when you are by yourself.
"You CAN'T buy ships for RL money." - MaxBacon
"classification of games into MMOs is not by rational reasoning" - nariusseldon
If someone wants to play a game alone, they should probably play single player games. There's enough content to solo while your friends are offline that you won't have nothing to do, and can then raid when everyone is together.
While that sounds good in theory, offering solocontent will bring soloplayers to the game no matter. And having content for them but no endgame is not fair.
Either skip the solopart or give soloers full content, MMOs should not have half-@ssed parts. The same goes for other stuff as well, like PvP, provide a good full experience or skip it and focus on making the parts in the game awesome.
Comments
...What?! This makes even less sense! I think rewards should be equal across the board. I really don't see what either of these posts has to do with anything I have said. My issue is with the fact that solo raiding is a complete contradiction. I have no problem with solo players having the same power level as raiders. I don't know where you are getting this. Raids have never been any more difficult than dungeons content wise, the difficulty comes from having more people with different skill levels, not the content itself.
Your posts make no sense, I'm starting to think you are just here to stir up drama/trouble.
Currently Playing: ESO and FFXIV
Have played: You name it
If you mention rose tinted glasses, you better be referring to Mitch Hedberg.
The reason you do not see this is that most MMORPGs are not made to have content that is actually challenging for a single player given the RPG and interface mechanics of the game.
Generally, in an MMORPG, either you can kill something or you can't and there is very little skills involved. The only time you see exceptions are when you have extremely excellent players exploiting (in a legal way) mechanics that are "peculiar" for a particular skill or boss. For example I have seen a video of a guy in LOTRO solo the Cold Bear Raid boss using a Loremaster basically taking advantage of the fact that while Cold Bear is immune to most CC he can be snared. So basically he snared and kited a raid boss for like 2 hours straight and eventually won.
This sounds boring but he basically had to be exactly on point for 2 hours straight with very little margin or error due to CDs so its quite impressive.
However most MMORPGs purposely deny the possibility of such gameplay. A lot of "skill" in action RPGs comes down to planning/strategy, movement, timing and CC the rest is mostly math and making sure your math lines up.
In the case of bosses most the "skill" portion of the RPG are actually purposely negated and most of the players goood defensive reactive abilities are also heavily reduced. Thus solo boss fights in MMORPGs are pale comparisons to real games, because they are intentionally neutered.
This is why you are unlikely to see such a thing. The whole "risk vs reward" or "raiding is harder" is complete an utter bullshit. There are plenty of essentially maximally challenging single player boss fights in the gaming genre. Some are legendarily hard. Solo play in MMORPGs is not "easy" it is simply neutered to the point of mostly being math except in a few rare exceptions.
Thus you should not ask for hard and reward solo content. Rather you should ask for interesting solo gameplay that allows for interesting and skillful combat without interefering with group mechanics. Because then they could actual deliver quality solo content.
As it stands right now, the only solo content an MMORPG can deliver is a grind for larger or more ideal numbers.
I've no idea who Nick Konkle is, but this is basically correct.
With all other things being equal, if you take the same nominal difficulty for an encounter, and then on top of the encounter's difficulty you also add organization, collaboration and coordination, then the encounter that has those latter 3 will be more difficult.
Do this mental exercise: Imagine the most difficult solo encounter you can imagine. Define it as however you want. Got it? Ok, now imagine two people doing that encounter (solo) in side by side rooms. Now, add to whatever encounter was before the condition that both of them have to kill the encounter within 3 seconds of each other. This new two-person encounter is now more difficult than whatever the solo encounter was, because two people need to coordinate - and this is regardless of how difficult the first encounter was. If it had difficulty "50" and you raise that difficulty to "100", the difficulty of the two-person encounter will still be more.
"Id rather work on something with great potential than on fulfilling a promise of mediocrity."
- Raph Koster
Tried: AO,EQ,EQ2,DAoC,SWG,AA,SB,HZ,CoX,PS,GA,TR,IV,GnH,EVE, PP,DnL,WAR,MxO,SWG,FE,VG,AoC,DDO,LoTRO,Rift,TOR,Aion,Tera,TSW,GW2,DCUO,CO,STO
Favourites: AO,SWG,EVE,TR,LoTRO,TSW,EQ2, Firefall
Currently Playing: ESO
Sorry, I'm swinging a two handed sword around here. Dint mean to hit you Lydia! Please for forgive me.
This is entirely wrong.
For each individual, performing in a phalanx at a high level, is NOT more challenging than boxing a single person at a high level.
An excellent boxer or wrestler or UFC fighter is presented with just as much challenge as anyone in a large unit of a fight. However the nature of the challenge is quite different as is the nature of the danger.
An individual can only do so many things, in so many ways. Just because a situation has more things going on does not mean its more "challenging" it just means that person has to be more spread out and aware of what is generally going on.
The amazing concentration that exists in a boxing match between two combatants is, just as, if not more challenging, but in a war battle where you are working with 20 other people it would also get you killed not because that is more challenging but because it has different demands.
Let me make this clear, there is no way you can make something more challenging than a one on one fight between two maximally skilled people. It is not possible. You can change the nature of the conflict but you cannot make it more challenging for that person.
This idea that "raids are harder because they are more complex" is just plain ignorant. it is also misguided as that line of thought would only apply to the computer CPU but DOES NOT apply to individuals as actors in the situation. Sadly computer devs who should know better, since they should have some grounding in complexity analysis, rarely understand this fact.
Sandbox means open world, non-linear gaming PERIOD!
Subscription Gaming, especially MMO gaming is a Cash grab bigger then the most P2W cash shop!
Bring Back Exploration and lengthy progression times. RPG's have always been about the Journey not the destination!!!
You are comparing DIFFERENT things. I am comparing the same thing.
Right, but if you take two boxing matches, each with its "amazing concentration" and now ask the boxers - in addition to the existing challenge to also BOTH win their resxpective matches at the same time, the challenge becomes greater than just the challenge of each one winning their match.
We're talking about developers designing something from the ground up to be difficult for one person. my point is that no matter what a developer designs, if they take that same design (which they usually do in MMOs) and add to it hte need to coordinate, it will immediately become tougher than what was designed for one person.
"Id rather work on something with great potential than on fulfilling a promise of mediocrity."
- Raph Koster
Tried: AO,EQ,EQ2,DAoC,SWG,AA,SB,HZ,CoX,PS,GA,TR,IV,GnH,EVE, PP,DnL,WAR,MxO,SWG,FE,VG,AoC,DDO,LoTRO,Rift,TOR,Aion,Tera,TSW,GW2,DCUO,CO,STO
Favourites: AO,SWG,EVE,TR,LoTRO,TSW,EQ2, Firefall
Currently Playing: ESO
Also let me make another point.
Some people claim "raids are harder because of other people".
No. Wrong. Raids are less likely to succeed because you depend on other people. If I personally perform at the best possible quality I can do, top notch legendary performance, yet the raid still fails because three other people screwed up.
Then that is that. Raid fails. But for me that failure has nothing to do with challenge, rather it was "bad luck". The only challenge there is that later on, we as a group would need to create some sort of consistency. There is a "social challenge". The solution is exactly the same as any person striving for solo excellence.
It a little thing called "practice". You that that thing that make "perfect".
But it is an inescapable fact that when I personally perform well yet we still fail I can only shrug my shoulders and realize that the content is not truly about challenge and in reality the "risk" can have almost nothing to do with me personally.
There are simpy a bunch more variables that are out of your control. This is not challenging. It may be rough. But its not challenging.
I can have a boxing match between two people and inside the boxing ring I can plant three land mines in random spots. That is rough and nasty. But did it make the actual match harder? No. Its just random death.
You can argue but in the raid example if everyone performs with excellence then you win. So what? You don't control other people. The best you can ever do is influence other people and makes guesses about their abilities and motives. That may be an interesting problem, but it is by no means the same thing as objectively winning something because of excellent performance.
Playing soccer is not harder than being a boxer. This is something everyone except MMORPG raiders understand on a fundamental level.
Yes, it should be in by default in a game that has solo lvling.
The whole aspect of an MMO that is a themepark with solo questing to build the character within the context of the MMO and story to make the charcter become more epic and a hero.
There is solo content at end game but those are dailies which are easy to do, sometimes there are small group heroics which can be soloed but most likely requiring raid gear to do it... and the rewards for dailies are just a precursor reward for raiding and is a grind.
By removing grinds and focusing on challenging content is what is required as proper end game for solo players and groups.
Why should a raid/instance be exclusive to groups only. When its part of the MMO story and sometimes the only challenging content with more than basic mechanics in the game.
It removes the reliance on groups which is good and bad. Bad with having to wait for gear grinds for other players to have equal gear to avoid so many wipes. Avoid difference in skill and avoid wipes. Avoid waiting for the right class.
In the end devs can reward groups differently as well. Reward guilds for raiding and then reward individuals with raid gear for doing the instance solo. It can also become good experience for any player that wants to practise for the raid.
So in effect there are two main reasons to have it; 1 . Allow average players to practise for groups. 2. Reward players for solo content that already exists in an MMO for the actually most complicated and detailed content in game as per quest/instance.
Too bad devs wont listen on this one... since it would be one hell of an act for them to balance if there is a trinity involved.
Write bad things that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on a piece of marble
Wrong. It will be become different, not harder. Individuals can only do so much.
Generally soldiers are piss poor swordsmen compared to duelists, they must concentrate on other far more important things because there are now other concerns.
All people who achieve excellence do it in only one way, a lifetime of practice. The nature of what you are doing will determine which things you practice often and which you only practice some.
This is the fundamental problem with raiders and why they are always wrong. This argument is just completely off base.
If you kept your brain the same size but suddenly gave you 100 arms. Would you suddenly be more challenged? No, you would be able to hold more things but have terrible manual dexterity and a shitty ability to use them in concert. You would boil everything down to the simplest possible operation you could because you can't deal with any overhead at all.
When you start multi tasking many things at once you simply become mediocre at all of them. Sometimes it is worthwhile to be mediocre at many things at once to achieve a larger goal. But being mediocre at many things is not more challenging than being excellent at one thing.
There is a reason that armies drill extremely simple things over and over again and treat recruits like idiots. Even the simplest of things become arduous in a large group setting. This doesn't mean things are overall harder. It make simple things harder.
A group as a whole never ever executes maneuvers on something even close to as compelx as individuals do.
You see. You have it backwards. The added complexity/wieght/overhead/(just plain randomness) fores groups into maneuvers and chains of events are much lower in total moves and much simpler in nature.
The over all challenge is the same. Simple moves are easier solo, but in the solo environment you can create a symphony of because of less overhead moves. The raids just play a kazoo, they just have a lot of people playing the same song on the kazoo at once. Which is still actually quite challenging, but it is just a kazoo.
The obvious counterpoint is, but what about when you have an entire raid capable of playing a symphony. That can only happen if the whole thing is planned.
THIS WILL NEVER EVER HAPPEN IN AN IMPROVISATIONAL ENVIRONMENT.
I repeat.
THIS WILL NEVER EVER HAPPEN IN AN IMPROVISATIONAL ENVIRONMENT.
Now ask any musician who knows what they are doing improvisation takes the most skill and knowledge of both music and your instrument.
There is no such thing as an improv orchestra of 80 people. It can't happen. It just blows up. But you can have it with 4 people and it can be pretty amazing.
No, but boxing as a team would be harder than boxing alone. Just like two soccer teams winning simultaneously would be harder than one soccer team winning on its own. But we're not talking about sports here, because sports are were not designed for the purpose of difficulty. No one sat down and said "hey, let's design the most difficult sport", that's not how boxing or soccer were born.
If you consider that things like teamwork, collaboration, leadership and organization do not take any skill and all come down to "being lucky", I can't really say anything to convince you otherwise. I just need to wait for you to live some more.
Any challenge designed for one person can be made more difficult by being designed for more than one. It can also be made easier by being designed for more than one. But when it comes to MMOs, anything that is designed is going to get reused as much as possible. So it goes back to the fact that even if a developer came up with something mindf**kingly hard to do as solo, another developer would simply grab that, add the need to coordinate to it and now have something that is more difficult "overall" and we'd back here saying "well, we need EVEN MORE challenging solo stuff".
"Id rather work on something with great potential than on fulfilling a promise of mediocrity."
- Raph Koster
Tried: AO,EQ,EQ2,DAoC,SWG,AA,SB,HZ,CoX,PS,GA,TR,IV,GnH,EVE, PP,DnL,WAR,MxO,SWG,FE,VG,AoC,DDO,LoTRO,Rift,TOR,Aion,Tera,TSW,GW2,DCUO,CO,STO
Favourites: AO,SWG,EVE,TR,LoTRO,TSW,EQ2, Firefall
Currently Playing: ESO
MMORPG have their own lexicon.............DERP.
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
By definition what your saying is impossible.
So true and so well said
I'm standing in a one tree orchard next to a single seagull flock. There is no such thing as solo raiding. You are either soloing or raiding. It's simple numbers.
Wanting challenging, end game content that provides top tier rewards that can be done solo is exactly that. There is no raid involved when you are by yourself.
"classification of games into MMOs is not by rational reasoning" - nariusseldon
Love Minecraft. And check out my Youtube channel OhCanadaGamer
Try a MUD today at http://www.mudconnect.com/While that sounds good in theory, offering solocontent will bring soloplayers to the game no matter. And having content for them but no endgame is not fair.
Either skip the solopart or give soloers full content, MMOs should not have half-@ssed parts. The same goes for other stuff as well, like PvP, provide a good full experience or skip it and focus on making the parts in the game awesome.
considering all the solo players, this should be a real option.
I agree 100% with you Lokee666
I just made my account today. I have a few questions..
Are people here really this stupid, or are they all trolls?
I was thinking the same thing....
wow maybe the genre really is dying now...
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
What game is it we are all playing that doesnt do this?
Philosophy of MMO Game Design