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.
I can't support that.
Not really. You often have multiple teams working on games so it would be rare for players to find a game that they can enjoy 100%. Most players have certain parts of games they like more than others. Some prefer PvP over PvE, while other players may prefer just questing and role play. Some players like the game except for end-game. This is why I often play a lot of alts. When I want more of a challenge, I play a more difficult class. What game has or has ever had 100% good game play?
"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
We could all just play blindfolded and developers would never have to worry about creating a challenge ever again!
A few years back (I forget which mmorpg it was), I tried turning off my monitor and seeing how many fights I could win just based on sound effects. It wasn't as difficult as it sounds (no pun intended).
Nowadays if I want a challenge, DOTA 2 is my go to game.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own. -- Herman Melville
We could all just play blindfolded and developers would never have to worry about creating a challenge ever again!
A few years back (I forget which mmorpg it was), I tried turning off my monitor and seeing how many fights I could win just based on sound effects. It wasn't as difficult as it sounds (no pun intended).
Nowadays if I want a challenge, DOTA 2 is my go to game.
Oh man... My most hated (and loved) moment in MMORPGs yet: EQ 1 when Orc Shamans in East Commonlands first blinded, then feared me. Screen goes black. Then you're running to who knows where. If the screen came back, you had no idea where you were. Most of the time, though, I saw the loading screen for when you died.
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.
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?"
I have never seen anyone that said this actually mean it.
Agree.
@OP I could list about 20 MMO´s that are all hard in their own way.... Heck even Mythic raiding in WoW is sure as fuck not a walk in the park, especially if you turn of boss mod and stay clear of guides. Questing in TSW can be hard as fuck since it partially rely on meta information...
Hard does not actually mean anything without describing what you are looking for.
Define what is a challenge to you and we might be able to assist. But until that point you might as well be screaming at people to bring you "the color".
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.
The best way to do a difficulty curve for open world imho is with monsters. Start with rats, rabbits etc, go to humanoids, undead, giants, dragons, demigods, dieties, and have the world inhabitants be the difficulty curve.
"You CAN'T buy ships for RL money." - MaxBacon
"classification of games into MMOs is not by rational reasoning" - nariusseldon
I'd rather have more fun mmos than harder mmos although many mmos are pretty much endless grindfest on casual difficulty, but some do have more difficulty content. A majority of players are casual players, but the hardcore players invest significantly more time and money into an mmo. Mmos only survive if they make money that means appealing to the part of their customer base that provides constant revenue streams. Games have to appeal to the broadest audience initially otherwise it may be dead on arrival.
I'd like some games that are not harder, but give you more options to complete a task. Ex: a farmer wants a pig you can either a) buy a pig b) capture a pig c) steal a pig with some branching quests from other npcs like d) ask the farmer if he wants anything else e) steal from the farmer f) kill the farmer Of course in that case there would be an obvious good or bad decision or the point is moot as the one with better loot is the way to go since it will help you in the long run... or will it
Most of the time you see a quest and repeat or do it once and never again It will probably take too long for branching quests so lets all go to easy mode
I can't find even one mmo that's not dumbed down easy. All mmos are this way, even the classics. From level 1 to max. The only way to die is if your totally not paying attention or go to the bathroom without putting your character on a hill.
I've played many mmos in the past few years where abilities are pure animation's. It doesn't matter anymore. No need for healers or even tanks unless your prepping for a mini game dungeon. Why craft, why trade ?
I made another post " What's the attraction of solo ". It seems like many here like solo, I get it now. But crazy easy ?
I often complain about not having group content. But don't you think games should be developed where it can be fun to have two or three players in a group as an option but not really needed. Why bother when a single player can mow down a mob of eight. Hack and slash.
Why are mmos made like this ?......Even for solo players.
I guess you do have a few like EVE, Project Gorgon, and Project 1999 EQ1. But how about something new, or main stream !
You will never get main stream. But you got Ryzom, SWG awaking, shadowbane, and the 3 you mention.
Gw2 is actually the most challenging mmorpg I ever played.
95% of gw2 is so easy a small kid can play. But there is this 5% of the content, I never been able to do.
I obviously understand what the op is saying, he basically want a game which is hard from start to finish.
Hard for whom though? Hard for 50% of gamers? 70%? 90%? 99%? Or "just hard enough that it's somewhat challenging for the OP, but easy enough that he can still get through the content"?
What if "hard" meant "too hard for the OP and his friends"? How would the OP feel about that?
Difficulty level is . . . erm . . . difficult to pin down as what is hard for one person is not for another and so on. Who is the arbiter for what is considered difficult? For example, the whole Dark Souls series has sold just 8 million copies across three titles. That's incredibly small. Overwatch, alone, sold more than 7 million units in just a month (as of June 3!).
Now, I'm not going to pretend that I'm a pro level player who can hang with the best of Overwatch, but anyone can easily play and enjoy Overwatch. The same cannot be said of Dark Souls. Not many people can play it and even fewer enjoy the challenge it offers. So the OP wants a hard game start to finish, great. But hard for whom?
Dumbed down and easy could be two different things. I hate the simplification of MMORPGs and the fact that they are no challenge.
Yeah yeah no money to be made off the people who like a hobby instead of a momentary distraction.
But the problem is exactly what you said about dying only if you went to get a drink while in combat. Combat that boring is more like basketweaving than fighting. Old games had boring combat but were hard. New games have exciting combat but most fights are super easy trash fights.
MMORPG players are often like Hobbits: They don't like Adventures
This is one of the biggest problems, in my opinion, with MMO's today and I echo the OP's sentiments. There is a definite section of MMO players that love those challenges, the struggle, and overcoming those situations. The leveling process in most MMO's today simply cater too much towards ease of access and convenience. It's understandable, you don't want to have people quitting your game and never coming back because it's difficult, especially in today's market. This is why myself and many of my friends have been turning away from pure MMORPG's in favor of other group focused challenging games, for example, MOBA's. Eventually someone will make another MMO that truly fits what I'm looking for and I can settle down into it like vanilla WoW did for me 11 years ago, until then I'll get my group/challenging content from MOBA's and some ARPG's.
Guild Wars 2 you can play 5 levels higher, I can't seem to counter production my self like that.
Something is not right about that.
You can only do that while leveling though, that is how I leveled almost all my characters. I wish they didn't do that silly difficulty nerf after beta week 1... And several since.
OP: I agree, or they could at least add a "hard" serverset (with a bit improved loot to get the risk vs reward right). It is not that much work since GW2 for example nerfed it's difficulty in just 2 weeks and it would make more than a few of us happy.
Balance in MMORPG seems to be doable by someone with baseline skill. MMORPG are a whiny bunch so I don't think they're ever going to have challenge in general questhub play.
One of the advantages of going levelless is you can have hard areas that are always challenging vs. having areas just baseline difficulty organized by levels like most games.
OP, you want harder MMO? It's called real life. In that MMO the rules aren't made to cater to someone with a bigger wallet or preferences. In that MMO the rules were always the same since the beginning of the universe.
At the end one of the reasons why we are not seeing hundreds of millions invested in AAA MMO's is because most of the market is already satisfied with this MMO that fulfills their needs.
If anything those who create virtual MMO's can learn from real life and why its so successful. I mean once we had this world with only water, earth, trees and resources scattered across. Then we start inventing and discovering things like the fire. Now look what we managed to create with those tools?
You can always "gimp" yourself, options are limitless...
That's a ridiculous response, you seem to have missed the point here.
Hey Priest, how come you cant heal the group its an easy dungeon, uh well guys Im using my level 10 heal to make the game harder....... Sure like that's really an option isn't it.
Oh you mean just gimp yourself when playing solo..............in an MMO.
He's talking about a game that's really hard for EVERYONE, which forces group play, interactions, crafting and trade.
What do you mean by "harder"? Do you mean stupid amounts of grinding that is so easy you don't even have to pay attention but it takes a long time? Or do you mean you're probably going to die a bunch of times on the way to the level cap?
How is this hard to understand, no he doesn't mean easy mobs to kill with a bunch of HP so it takes you along time to kill them. Hes obviously talking about mobs that are complex, and yes mobs that kill you over and over until you figure it out all the way to level cap where it then gets even harder. Mobs that require planning and group tactics, regular trash world mobs the drop mats that you need to CRAFT better gear so you can kill harder mobs. Not mobs that are gear loot piñatas like we have today.
Games where quest rewards don't gear you up and pimp you out, so you don't have interact with crafters and other people to progress. Huge parts of the game you just cant enter alone or its certain death. Etc.
I wish there was even one decent MMO where i could play 8 hours a day and not max my character in 10+ years. All these 3-month-MMOs they tend to release nowadays are not worth my time and money.
Why even develop games your players complete in less time than it takes to make new content?
I wished that as well until I became an adult with interests outside of MMORPGs.
What I would love is a personal scaler, we're getting close to the ability of this becoming a reality if its not already.
Take WoW for instance, right click your portrait and click Monster scale, you can raise or decrease it by 10% increments and it increases the loot drop rate, xp and rep in the same manner.
City of Heroes had a personal slider. Before some like B comes here and say it, yes, it was for instance situations. However, in world events like the Rikti Invasion, mobs were effectively the same level for all. Suppose that Purple meant +3 to your level, then for a level 4 character he would be attacking a level 7 mob and a level 50 character would be attacking that same mob as if it were level 53. So that is how you could have everyone fighting and contributing in those types of events.
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?"
Comments
"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
Nowadays if I want a challenge, DOTA 2 is my go to game.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
-- Herman Melville
VG
95% of gw2 is so easy a small kid can play. But there is this 5% of the content, I never been able to do.
I obviously understand what the op is saying, he basically want a game which is hard from start to finish.
You should create your own game.
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?"
Agree.
@OP I could list about 20 MMO´s that are all hard in their own way.... Heck even Mythic raiding in WoW is sure as fuck not a walk in the park, especially if you turn of boss mod and stay clear of guides. Questing in TSW can be hard as fuck since it partially rely on meta information...
Hard does not actually mean anything without describing what you are looking for.
Define what is a challenge to you and we might be able to assist. But until that point you might as well be screaming at people to bring you "the color".
This have been a good conversation
"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/Even LOL is "good" for many of its fans.
I'd like some games that are not harder, but give you more options to complete a task. Ex: a farmer wants a pig you can either a) buy a pig b) capture a pig c) steal a pig with some branching quests from other npcs like d) ask the farmer if he wants anything else e) steal from the farmer f) kill the farmer
Of course in that case there would be an obvious good or bad decision or the point is moot as the one with better loot is the way to go since it will help you in the long run... or will it
Most of the time you see a quest and repeat or do it once and never again
It will probably take too long for branching quests so lets all go to easy mode
Hard for whom though? Hard for 50% of gamers? 70%? 90%? 99%? Or "just hard enough that it's somewhat challenging for the OP, but easy enough that he can still get through the content"?
What if "hard" meant "too hard for the OP and his friends"? How would the OP feel about that?
Difficulty level is . . . erm . . . difficult to pin down as what is hard for one person is not for another and so on. Who is the arbiter for what is considered difficult? For example, the whole Dark Souls series has sold just 8 million copies across three titles. That's incredibly small. Overwatch, alone, sold more than 7 million units in just a month (as of June 3!).
Now, I'm not going to pretend that I'm a pro level player who can hang with the best of Overwatch, but anyone can easily play and enjoy Overwatch. The same cannot be said of Dark Souls. Not many people can play it and even fewer enjoy the challenge it offers. So the OP wants a hard game start to finish, great. But hard for whom?
WTH is 100% good game play anyway? What in life is ever 100% enjoyable...besides bacon cheese burgers?
Games? What have you played or missed? Fallout series? Elder Scrolls? Diablo 2? Unreal? So many more.
Wondering if Octagon has played any games at all.....
"This may hurt a little, but it's something you'll get used to. Relax....."
Yeah yeah no money to be made off the people who like a hobby instead of a momentary distraction.
But the problem is exactly what you said about dying only if you went to get a drink while in combat. Combat that boring is more like basketweaving than fighting. Old games had boring combat but were hard. New games have exciting combat but most fights are super easy trash fights.
OP: I agree, or they could at least add a "hard" serverset (with a bit improved loot to get the risk vs reward right). It is not that much work since GW2 for example nerfed it's difficulty in just 2 weeks and it would make more than a few of us happy.
One of the advantages of going levelless is you can have hard areas that are always challenging vs. having areas just baseline difficulty organized by levels like most games.
At the end one of the reasons why we are not seeing hundreds of millions invested in AAA MMO's is because most of the market is already satisfied with this MMO that fulfills their needs.
If anything those who create virtual MMO's can learn from real life and why its so successful. I mean once we had this world with only water, earth, trees and resources scattered across. Then we start inventing and discovering things like the fire. Now look what we managed to create with those tools?
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
That's a ridiculous response, you seem to have missed the point here.
Hey Priest, how come you cant heal the group its an easy dungeon, uh well guys Im using my level 10 heal to make the game harder....... Sure like that's really an option isn't it.
Oh you mean just gimp yourself when playing solo..............in an MMO.
He's talking about a game that's really hard for EVERYONE, which forces group play, interactions, crafting and trade.
How is this hard to understand, no he doesn't mean easy mobs to kill with a bunch of HP so it takes you along time to kill them. Hes obviously talking about mobs that are complex, and yes mobs that kill you over and over until you figure it out all the way to level cap where it then gets even harder. Mobs that require planning and group tactics, regular trash world mobs the drop mats that you need to CRAFT better gear so you can kill harder mobs. Not mobs that are gear loot piñatas like we have today.
Games where quest rewards don't gear you up and pimp you out, so you don't have interact with crafters and other people to progress. Huge parts of the game you just cant enter alone or its certain death. Etc.
Sounds like the perfect game to me.
I wished that as well until I became an adult with interests outside of MMORPGs.
City of Heroes had a personal slider. Before some like B comes here and say it, yes, it was for instance situations. However, in world events like the Rikti Invasion, mobs were effectively the same level for all. Suppose that Purple meant +3 to your level, then for a level 4 character he would be attacking a level 7 mob and a level 50 character would be attacking that same mob as if it were level 53. So that is how you could have everyone fighting and contributing in those types of events.
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?"