I know it's not an MMO, but when I play the Far Cry games, I tend to artificially make the game harder on myself by only clearing outposts with a knife and not being detected.
As others in this thread have already stated, you can simply apply that kind of principle to the games that currently exist. Jean Luc mentioned the iron man challenge in GW2, but I urge you to try the same thing in Age of Conan with a Barbarian. 1-80 in AoC with a Barb and not dying once? Whoooo boy, that's a goddamn challenge.
Also, some of the most challenging end game raid content I've seen in a game are the Tier 4-5-6 raids in AoC. It took two years after release before more than 3 guilds were regularly clearing Tier 4 and I think only one guild has killed every boss in Tier 6 so far which has been out for nearly six months.
No. The best solution is a difficulty slider. No matter how difficult you set a game, there will always be those who complain that it is too easy, or too hard.
I loved LotRO, I even ran the vault network fan site back then for a while (lotrovault), but come on... LotRO hard? Seriously?
I didn't say it was hard, I even started my post saying I haven't played a hard MMO yet.
I said it was the hardest out of the MMOs I have played. Only reason is because its the only MMO I've played with a deep combat system where success / failure was almost 100% based on player and group skill.
The game was still easy.
I was honestly truly shocked when I left LotRO for WAR and SW:TOR and found those games to be easier, especially star wars. That game was so mind-numbingly easy I couldn't believe, was even more shocked when some people found it difficult!
Currently Playing: WAR RoR - Spitt rr7X Black Orc | Scrotling rr6X Squig Herder | Scabrous rr4X Shaman
I loved LotRO, I even ran the vault network fan site back then for a while (lotrovault), but come on... LotRO hard? Seriously?
I didn't say it was hard, I even started my post saying I haven't played a hard MMO yet.
I said it was the hardest out of the MMOs I have played. Only reason is because its the only MMO I've played with a deep combat system where success / failure was almost 100% based on player and group skill.
The game was still easy.
I was honestly truly shocked when I left LotRO for WAR and SW:TOR and found those games to be easier, especially star wars. That game was so mind-numbingly easy I couldn't believe, was even more shocked when some people found it difficult!
Have you played SWTOR since KOTFE? I'm not even joking when I say it's so easy now that you could run up to an enemy and roll your face on the keyboard. Encounters that were challenging in the first year of the game are a joke now. It's simply a glorified casino now.
Have you played SWTOR since KOTFE? I'm not even joking when I say it's so easy now that you could run up to an enemy and roll your face on the keyboard. Encounters that were challenging in the first year of the game are a joke now. It's simply a glorified casino now.
Have you played SWTOR since KOTFE? I'm not even joking when I say it's so easy now that you could run up to an enemy and roll your face on the keyboard. Encounters that were challenging in the first year of the game are a joke now. It's simply a glorified casino now.
I hope this isn't the future of MMO's.
Clearly they need a difficulty slider.
Which works fine in the context of a single player game, but in an open world MMORPG, then that's not possible. Difficulty, in this age of game design, simply means adding XP to the enemy, lowering the players health and sometimes increasing the damage of NPC's and reducing the damage of players.
In other words, the majority of what a difficulty slider would be changing would be entities that all other players would want to interact with.
On the other hand, a raid difficulty slider would be nice for instanced combat such as raids, although Age of Conan already has something like that where dungeons can be done in one of several modes. Unfortunately, this doesn't apply to raids, just six person groups.
delete5230 said:
Come on.....No one likes to play like that.
Add that how often do you see someone playing naked with a small dagger unless their a pervert.
The point being, there are ways to make the game more difficult even without going into extremes of running around naked and undergeared but convenience still wins, even over those who claim that want games more difficult.
Personally, I dont feel the leveling process should be easier or the same difficulty as doing it with a group, but that's another issue entirely. Most devs do make the leveling process easier but many forms of endgame content do provide challenges. The problem is that there's multiple versions of said content usually (PUG, Normal, Hard, etc) and the rewards are often not justifiable especially if you know the devs will just nerf the fights some months down the line so more people can participate in the harder content. FFXIV is honestly a prime example. This game has ALOT of challenging content; however, many people dont feel the rewards justify doing them (can find several threads on the raiding scene on the official NA forum). But the challenge is absolutely there. Many people still can't clear T5 Coil capped, let alone other old raids at the level sync'd level.
But again, why bother if you dont have to? I mean since its been around for so long now too, if you just wanted the story you could youtube the scenes. One of my ideas to kind of combat this and make content as long as it used to be in the past was just to make one version of the content and put most of the end tier progression behind it. Of course the carebears dont like this idea which is why there's multiple forms of the same content to date but honestly it helps make content last longer. The only reason I see devs not doing this is because competition and afraid it will lower retention which it obviously will. But that's what the market is like now. Carebears make up the majority of mmorpg players now and if stuff is too hard, they'll just jump to something else. Pantheon save us!
I wouldnt mind if ANET and Blizzard make the open world questing/exploration more challenging, but asking for a brand new mmos that is difficult? they will just dumb it down to oblivion as well, so no.
Challenge in mmos is difficult to achieve. Most companies decide to take the easy way out and add a huge HP bar with high damage and call it a day. That is neither difficult nor challenging if the AI is braindead like the vast majority of mmos have. Notice i am talking about open world enemies (trash, elite, bosses, everything), not talking about dungeons and raids. The actual game is in the open world to me.
Difficulty was always arbitrary. Those blue conned mobs could have been your level, 5 below or 10 above. And if you found it easy you went to yellow or red. .. the same is happening with numbers. What's stopping you from going after harder mobs. .. you know like we have done in every game since time began.
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is bad.
I guess you do have a few like EVE, Project Gorgon, and Project 1999 EQ1. But how about something new, or main stream !
There was. It was called Wildstar and people hated it.
Wildstar swung and missed on a lot of levels, not just the difficulty level of the content. I think had they hit the other parts of the game just right, particularly the aesthetics, then it would be a lot more popular today.
There are ways. In ESO I don't use armor sets, don't craft at all, and just not minimaxing in any game makes it more of a challenge. As to GW2 to make it harder (it's a game designed for fast leveling) you would have to use skills you like even if they're not optimal skills, dps is everything but I play survival builds which aren't optimal but I enjoy especially when a mob exploits and the players around me are all downed. Playing the game the way you want vs optimal always provides a good challenge which I find enjoyable.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
I guess you do have a few like EVE, Project Gorgon, and Project 1999 EQ1. But how about something new, or main stream !
There was. It was called Wildstar and people hated it.
Difficulty wasn't the problem with Wildstar. Fighting more against awkward controls than against mobs, game breaking bugs taking months to get fixed, and content forcing you to rely on other players who don't exist because the game world is empty are huge problems regardless of combat difficulty.
When players start putting the responsibility of satisfying challenge and game design on themselves instead of the developers, then we have truly lost.
Thats been the case in every video game I've ever played. When something was too easy I went to a harder area.
If there's a harder area available, then the developers have done their job.
I'm talking about the players who excuse bad game design by telling other players to "create their own challenge" - which, to me, is like saying I might as well create my own game.
It's like saying when a movie doesn't make any sense at all - I should just invent my own script and imagine good reasons for stupid things happening in the movie.
Difficulty was always arbitrary. Those blue conned mobs could have been your level, 5 below or 10 above. And if you found it easy you went to yellow or red. .. the same is happening with numbers. What's stopping you from going after harder mobs. .. you know like we have done in every game since time began.
Yes, "difficulty" is very arbitrary. Quite a few MMOs today use leveled zones so those "more difficult monsters are our of reach sometimes.
As for the other posts basically saying, "Gimp your character", why should I have to? Can't I play the same game others are playing? And who want to group with my gimp?
VestigeGamer said:
As for the other posts basically saying, "Gimp your character", why should I have to? Can't I play the same game others are playing? And who want to group with my gimp?
That is easy.
1) You do not have to, you can. It is optional.
2) You are still playing the game others are playing.
3) Games are full of casuals who do not care as much about min-maxing, right...?
Have you played SWTOR since KOTFE? I'm not even joking when I say it's so easy now that you could run up to an enemy and roll your face on the keyboard. Encounters that were challenging in the first year of the game are a joke now. It's simply a glorified casino now.
I hope this isn't the future of MMO's.
Clearly they need a difficulty slider.
Which works fine in the context of a single player game, but in an open world MMORPG, then that's not possible.
Just make instanced MMORPGs, problem solved. Another reason why an open "persistent" world (as opposed to single player open world) is not that desirable.
Comments
As others in this thread have already stated, you can simply apply that kind of principle to the games that currently exist. Jean Luc mentioned the iron man challenge in GW2, but I urge you to try the same thing in Age of Conan with a Barbarian. 1-80 in AoC with a Barb and not dying once? Whoooo boy, that's a goddamn challenge.
Also, some of the most challenging end game raid content I've seen in a game are the Tier 4-5-6 raids in AoC. It took two years after release before more than 3 guilds were regularly clearing Tier 4 and I think only one guild has killed every boss in Tier 6 so far which has been out for nearly six months.
I said it was the hardest out of the MMOs I have played. Only reason is because its the only MMO I've played with a deep combat system where success / failure was almost 100% based on player and group skill.
The game was still easy.
I was honestly truly shocked when I left LotRO for WAR and SW:TOR and found those games to be easier, especially star wars. That game was so mind-numbingly easy I couldn't believe, was even more shocked when some people found it difficult!
I hope this isn't the future of MMO's.
In other words, the majority of what a difficulty slider would be changing would be entities that all other players would want to interact with.
On the other hand, a raid difficulty slider would be nice for instanced combat such as raids, although Age of Conan already has something like that where dungeons can be done in one of several modes. Unfortunately, this doesn't apply to raids, just six person groups.
But again, why bother if you dont have to? I mean since its been around for so long now too, if you just wanted the story you could youtube the scenes. One of my ideas to kind of combat this and make content as long as it used to be in the past was just to make one version of the content and put most of the end tier progression behind it. Of course the carebears dont like this idea which is why there's multiple forms of the same content to date but honestly it helps make content last longer. The only reason I see devs not doing this is because competition and afraid it will lower retention which it obviously will. But that's what the market is like now. Carebears make up the majority of mmorpg players now and if stuff is too hard, they'll just jump to something else. Pantheon save us!
Challenge in mmos is difficult to achieve. Most companies decide to take the easy way out and add a huge HP bar with high damage and call it a day. That is neither difficult nor challenging if the AI is braindead like the vast majority of mmos have. Notice i am talking about open world enemies (trash, elite, bosses, everything), not talking about dungeons and raids. The actual game is in the open world to me.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
I'm talking about the players who excuse bad game design by telling other players to "create their own challenge" - which, to me, is like saying I might as well create my own game.
It's like saying when a movie doesn't make any sense at all - I should just invent my own script and imagine good reasons for stupid things happening in the movie.
I can't support that.
As for the other posts basically saying, "Gimp your character", why should I have to? Can't I play the same game others are playing? And who want to group with my gimp?
VG
1) You do not have to, you can. It is optional.
2) You are still playing the game others are playing.
3) Games are full of casuals who do not care as much about min-maxing, right...?