That's a convoluted way to say that older MMOs, while mechanically simple, generally had stronger enemies by way of health and damage, alongside player classes that had more finite resources and means, forcing the fight to drag out as well as leave players to recover slower after each fight.
Also, that's not really more challenging, just slower.
Well, older MMOs were more challenging in the sense that you can be killed if you aren't paying attention to the fight or your immediate surroundings. The challenge was to just pay attention and you should be fine (and laugh it off when a random spider that you didn't notice pulls up from behind you and snipes you at 1 hp and steals your girlfriend).
Also, personally -- even if a fight technically lasts longer, if it demands a little something of me, then it can feel shorter than a fight that poses no danger. Makes it more immersive to me. That said, you're 100% right that challenge can be mistaken with just artificially lengthening a simple fight, that's just fighting lethargy.
As for slower post-fight recovery, one upside of having to recover more slowly after each fight means it gives people time to communicate, create banter, and make it feel like a more social adventure. To understand how "off the deep end" I really am, if I were to design a game I'd even require players to sit at campfires together at times to heal up, for like, five minutes, maybe even eight minutes. THAT'S RIGHT, SUFFER TEDIUM MY MINIONS, SO THAT YOU MAY FORGE BONDS THAT YOU WILL GROW TO TREASURE MORE THAN YOUR LOOT!! MWAHAHAHA!!!
In my experience, people either really resonate with these ideas or really don't, and fair enough. But to answer the original post's question again, it's not about wanting hard mode challenge, just normal mode or even easy, not tutorial. Partially because it's not just about the challenge but the stuff that challenge brings with it (like pauses and breaks allowing time for social bonding; "a song is as much its silence as its notes," as it were).
Though I don't think this is necessarily wrong, I do think it's a bit or a rose-tinted interpretation.
"Demanding something" from the players wasn't a bigger thing in the past. By virtue of limitations, there's only so much depth old games could even deliver on a tactical response level. This is where things like twisting skills in EQ comes from. The amount of synergy skill usage had was pretty stunted and the notion of combos was almost nonexistent.
Looking at games from 2+ decades ago, the depth of their engagement wasn't actually that great.
Where games from ~1 decade ago compare, they do have more moving parts to their combat. Even ESO operates on a baseline of all players having functions around timed mitigation, interrupts, and ability combos. The mistake games like ESO made was how flattened the way mobs behave and the amount of damage they deal/take versus the present meta of characters.
But looking at that same general generation, we also have games like GW2 where regular mobs still pose a threat to players. If you're on it, then you can take on a crowd of them. If you're not, one or two can lay you flat. All boils down to your own handle on your skills and the focus you have on the moment.
I would comfortably argue that engaging players has improved, and with that the potential for complexity in combat and subsequent challenge, but the offset is the traditional scaling still used and pushed to an extreme with trash mobs and damage sponges defining the bulk of "difficulty" in a rather broad spectrum of games. From game to game this can vary quite a bit even from the same generation.
I would also question the claim that downtime = communication. I don't refute that people usually desire interaction, and downtime facilitates that, but I would refer to the first post I'd made in this other thread.
Namely, communication exists, it's just distributed across other platforms and methods. Forced downtime in a game creates a window for potential communication, but that doesn't necessarily conclude in it actually generating such, especially so in the context of in-game chat. It's a different set of distractions nowadays. How many people have their mobile phone on or near their desk? How many people have Discord or something else open in the background for messages or chat? How many people distract themselves with streaming media/tv, twitch/youtubers, or just random internet memery or news?
Times are just different, and the conditions for outcomes is different. Can't expect how things played out in the past to be directly reproducible in present.
On communication and socialness, I agree with your point. But it's a shame, because running into other players in such a group is a drag. You don't "hear" anything they say, and no matter the situation, it affects the player who's not "hearing" what's being said.
A less "levelled" player misses out on a lot of learning, about the game and tactics. And it's just a lonely world to play in. I wish there were something that would be done to keep communication open in the game world.
On communication and socialness, I agree with your point. But it's a shame, because running into other players in such a group is a drag. You don't "hear" anything they say, and no matter the situation, it affects the player who's not "hearing" what's being said.
A less "levelled" player misses out on a lot of learning, about the game and tactics. And it's just a lonely world to play in. I wish there were something that would be done to keep communication open in the game world.
Communication isn't what causes players to learn how to play well. Sure, it can help. What leads players to learn how to play well is for it to matter if they can play well. If being good at the game means you win, and being bad at the game also means that you win, then under the rules of the game, who says the "bad" player isn't actually good at the game?
That's why challenge is essential. Playing badly has to mean that you fail at something, at least sometimes. Otherwise, there's no point in learning how to play, or even a meaningful concept of getting better at the game.
Though I don't think this is necessarily wrong, I do think it's a bit or a rose-tinted interpretation.
"Demanding something" from the players wasn't a bigger thing in the past. By virtue of limitations, there's only so much depth old games could even deliver on a tactical response level. This is where things like twisting skills in EQ comes from. The amount of synergy skill usage had was pretty stunted and the notion of combos was almost nonexistent.
Looking at games from 2+ decades ago, the depth of their engagement wasn't actually that great.
Where games from ~1 decade ago compare, they do have more moving parts to their combat. Even ESO operates on a baseline of all players having functions around timed mitigation, interrupts, and ability combos. The mistake games like ESO made was how flattened the way mobs behave and the amount of damage they deal/take versus the present meta of characters.
But looking at that same general generation, we also have games like GW2 where regular mobs still pose a threat to players. If you're on it, then you can take on a crowd of them. If you're not, one or two can lay you flat. All boils down to your own handle on your skills and the focus you have on the moment.
I would comfortably argue that engaging players has improved, and with that the potential for complexity in combat and subsequent challenge, but the offset is the traditional scaling still used and pushed to an extreme with trash mobs and damage sponges defining the bulk of "difficulty" in a rather broad spectrum of games. From game to game this can vary quite a bit even from the same generation.
I would also question the claim that downtime = communication. I don't refute that people usually desire interaction, and downtime facilitates that, but I would refer to the first post I'd made in this other thread.
Namely, communication exists, it's just distributed across other platforms and methods. Forced downtime in a game creates a window for potential communication, but that doesn't necessarily conclude in it actually generating such, especially so in the context of in-game chat. It's a different set of distractions nowadays. How many people have their mobile phone on or near their desk? How many people have Discord or something else open in the background for messages or chat? How many people distract themselves with streaming media/tv, twitch/youtubers, or just random internet memery or news?
Times are just different, and the conditions for outcomes is different. Can't expect how things played out in the past to be directly reproducible in present.
Interesting post. On moving parts, you're right, but then again I'm not sure that it mattered with all games.
UO had what most would think of as a simple design, on the face of it. But a deeper perspective revealed how marvelously complicated it was. There were a lot of "tricks" to use in UO combat. It was all based on the overall design. Things that affected this: - Blocking, no running through players or MOBs. - Spell fizzles (decreased with skill per level of spell, and almost never at high skill). - Spell cast disruption by taking damage. Different spell levels had different casting times. - Random damage and Missed Attacks. (Both were almost unnoticeable at high skill levels) - Couldn't Heal if Poisoned. Cure poison first, then heal.
There's more, but that gets into a lot of explanation.
All of this meant that you had to stay on your toes and think a lot, even in PvE.
I called it "marvelously complicated", and I thought that system was more fun than any other that I've played.
I'm inclined to agree pretty broadly, trhough it did remind me of a gripe I have. XD I don't think that these mechanics aren't represented by modern games.
I do think though, in mirroring Quizz's point, many of them have been rendered irrelevant by the way gameplay has been balanced.
You only really engage in the use of particular skills in high-end gameplay for some titles, like trials or raids, and it's not consistent either since sometimes the challenge just boils down to "more DPS".
I think Warframe is a decent example of a game here which actually has a rather broad set of mechanics, that are largely not engaged with. We could be playing a squad game where CC, interrupts, heals, etc matters. However, we've had years of optimization that ultimately focuses on damage mitigation, or no selling damage outright, and massive amounts of AOE based DPS. The complexity is there in the gameplay, but the meta renders it irrelevant.
If being good at the game means you win, and being bad at the game also means that you win, then under the rules of the game, who says the "bad" player isn't actually good at the game?
That's why challenge is essential. Playing badly has to mean that you fail at something, at least sometimes. Otherwise, there's no point in learning how to play, or even a meaningful concept of getting better at the game.
See, this just shows how much you care about video game """skill""" and """challenge"""
The best scenario is the one described earlier "If being good at the game means you win, and being bad at the game also means that you win"
In ff14 you can go into its version of LFR via solo que and do the raid, if it is brand new similar to LFR there will be a few wipes but after a few wipes the boss will eventually die.
This results
-People experience the group content that only organized social groups did before
-People being rewards for their time spend because this was a time investment
-Some of those if interested will decide to do higher difficulties, FOR THEIR OWN FUN/dps fights, not so they can delude themselves sthey are speshiul
All healthy people are happy and get something out of it, it is a video game, it is meant to be about casual fun.
The unhealthy person on the other hand has a tantrum that the dirty casual bad player got the same cool armor set as the mythic version which is what FF14 just did, people can just solo que for LFR and get that set with cool animation unlike outdated games like WoW that still gatekeep it behind mythic.
You dont care about "challenge", you just want to force challenge at everyone's throat so some people fail so you can feel special, the ironic thing is, if the game was truly challenging only 1% would beat it because video games are made to be won, and dont require ever completely optimal mistake free performance nor an intelligent opponent that cant be predicted, but hey, illusion of challenge is the same as challenge for people who cant see that.
Hopefully more and more mmos will start following the gw2/ff14 example and start treating everyone equally instead of trying to glority and treat mentally unhealthy people as special to get them more addicted.
If being good at the game means you win, and being bad at the game also means that you win, then under the rules of the game, who says the "bad" player isn't actually good at the game?
That's why challenge is essential. Playing badly has to mean that you fail at something, at least sometimes. Otherwise, there's no point in learning how to play, or even a meaningful concept of getting better at the game.
See, this just shows how much you care about video game """skill""" and """challenge"""
The best scenario is the one described earlier "If being good at the game means you win, and being bad at the game also means that you win"
In ff14 you can go into its version of LFR via solo que and do the raid, if it is brand new similar to LFR there will be a few wipes but after a few wipes the boss will eventually die.
This results
-People experience the group content that only organized social groups did before
-People being rewards for their time spend because this was a time investment
-Some of those if interested will decide to do higher difficulties, FOR THEIR OWN FUN/dps fights, not so they can delude themselves sthey are speshiul
All healthy people are happy and get something out of it, it is a video game, it is meant to be about casual fun.
The unhealthy person on the other hand has a tantrum that the dirty casual bad player got the same cool armor set as the mythic version which is what FF14 just did, people can just solo que for LFR and get that set with cool animation unlike outdated games like WoW that still gatekeep it behind mythic.
You dont care about "challenge", you just want to force challenge at everyone's throat so some people fail so you can feel special, the ironic thing is, if the game was truly challenging only 1% would beat it because video games are made to be won, and dont require ever completely optimal mistake free performance nor an intelligent opponent that cant be predicted, but hey, illusion of challenge is the same as challenge for people who cant see that.
Hopefully more and more mmos will start following the gw2/ff14 example and start treating everyone equally instead of trying to glority and treat mentally unhealthy people as special to get them more addicted.
Healthy people have the mental fortitude to accept failure in order to learn from it and grow as a person. Healthy people don't need to receive the same reward as everyone else to affirm their belief that everyone is just as mediocre as they believe themselves to be.
Iunno how many times it's been show at this point through studies, but generally it's been found that more healthy/well adjusted people are actually more open to taking on challenge.
It's not a case of gambling against risk, rather it's pushing boundaries and expanding skill.
Almost completely antithetical to Ralph's narrative.
Also, apparently Ralph doesn't know what a Kaizo game is I guess.
Though I don't think this is necessarily wrong, I do think it's a bit or a rose-tinted interpretation.
"Demanding something" from the players wasn't a bigger thing in the past. By virtue of limitations, there's only so much depth old games could even deliver on a tactical response level. This is where things like twisting skills in EQ comes from. The amount of synergy skill usage had was pretty stunted and the notion of combos was almost nonexistent.
Looking at games from 2+ decades ago, the depth of their engagement wasn't actually that great.
Where games from ~1 decade ago compare, they do have more moving parts to their combat. Even ESO operates on a baseline of all players having functions around timed mitigation, interrupts, and ability combos. The mistake games like ESO made was how flattened the way mobs behave and the amount of damage they deal/take versus the present meta of characters.
But looking at that same general generation, we also have games like GW2 where regular mobs still pose a threat to players. If you're on it, then you can take on a crowd of them. If you're not, one or two can lay you flat. All boils down to your own handle on your skills and the focus you have on the moment.
I would comfortably argue that engaging players has improved, and with that the potential for complexity in combat and subsequent challenge, but the offset is the traditional scaling still used and pushed to an extreme with trash mobs and damage sponges defining the bulk of "difficulty" in a rather broad spectrum of games. From game to game this can vary quite a bit even from the same generation.
I would also question the claim that downtime = communication. I don't refute that people usually desire interaction, and downtime facilitates that, but I would refer to the first post I'd made in this other thread.
Namely, communication exists, it's just distributed across other platforms and methods. Forced downtime in a game creates a window for potential communication, but that doesn't necessarily conclude in it actually generating such, especially so in the context of in-game chat. It's a different set of distractions nowadays. How many people have their mobile phone on or near their desk? How many people have Discord or something else open in the background for messages or chat? How many people distract themselves with streaming media/tv, twitch/youtubers, or just random internet memery or news?
Times are just different, and the conditions for outcomes is different. Can't expect how things played out in the past to be directly reproducible in present.
Interesting post. On moving parts, you're right, but then again I'm not sure that it mattered with all games.
UO had what most would think of as a simple design, on the face of it. But a deeper perspective revealed how marvelously complicated it was. There were a lot of "tricks" to use in UO combat. It was all based on the overall design. Things that affected this: - Blocking, no running through players or MOBs. - Spell fizzles (decreased with skill per level of spell, and almost never at high skill). - Spell cast disruption by taking damage. Different spell levels had different casting times. - Random damage and Missed Attacks. (Both were almost unnoticeable at high skill levels) - Couldn't Heal if Poisoned. Cure poison first, then heal.
There's more, but that gets into a lot of explanation.
All of this meant that you had to stay on your toes and think a lot, even in PvE.
I called it "marvelously complicated", and I thought that system was more fun than any other that I've played.
I'm inclined to agree pretty broadly, trhough it did remind me of a gripe I have. XD I don't think that these mechanics aren't represented by modern games.
I do think though, in mirroring Quizz's point, many of them have been rendered irrelevant by the way gameplay has been balanced.
You only really engage in the use of particular skills in high-end gameplay for some titles, like trials or raids, and it's not consistent either since sometimes the challenge just boils down to "more DPS".
I think Warframe is a decent example of a game here which actually has a rather broad set of mechanics, that are largely not engaged with. We could be playing a squad game where CC, interrupts, heals, etc matters. However, we've had years of optimization that ultimately focuses on damage mitigation, or no selling damage outright, and massive amounts of AOE based DPS. The complexity is there in the gameplay, but the meta renders it irrelevant.
Yeah, I agree. In some games, I saw interesting possibilities for alternate game play from the norm, but as I did the numbers I often found that it was a setback to do so.
AoE damage is well overblown as far as game design in modern games. In UO, AoE would also damage your friends and any other players, so that was only used in rare cases (solo, or "the perfect opportunity").
The concept of timing is pretty well done in most good games, but in UO (again) it was a constant thing in all battles with any risk to them. Everything you do should have timing involved in the strategy. And getting the timing right can feel very rewarding. Just as much as using that "one-off" (timers) extra powerful special, or any big hit or escape. Having multiples of those moments in one battle is great stuff. It turns the tide of battle, and then wins those battles. I'm talking about all individual players, as opposed to the group strategies that are available in modern games.
If being good at the game means you win, and being bad at the game also means that you win, then under the rules of the game, who says the "bad" player isn't actually good at the game?
That's why challenge is essential. Playing badly has to mean that you fail at something, at least sometimes. Otherwise, there's no point in learning how to play, or even a meaningful concept of getting better at the game.
See, this just shows how much you care about video game """skill""" and """challenge"""
The best scenario is the one described earlier "If being good at the game means you win, and being bad at the game also means that you win"
In ff14 you can go into its version of LFR via solo que and do the raid, if it is brand new similar to LFR there will be a few wipes but after a few wipes the boss will eventually die.
This results
-People experience the group content that only organized social groups did before
-People being rewards for their time spend because this was a time investment
-Some of those if interested will decide to do higher difficulties, FOR THEIR OWN FUN/dps fights, not so they can delude themselves sthey are speshiul
All healthy people are happy and get something out of it, it is a video game, it is meant to be about casual fun.
The unhealthy person on the other hand has a tantrum that the dirty casual bad player got the same cool armor set as the mythic version which is what FF14 just did, people can just solo que for LFR and get that set with cool animation unlike outdated games like WoW that still gatekeep it behind mythic.
You dont care about "challenge", you just want to force challenge at everyone's throat so some people fail so you can feel special, the ironic thing is, if the game was truly challenging only 1% would beat it because video games are made to be won, and dont require ever completely optimal mistake free performance nor an intelligent opponent that cant be predicted, but hey, illusion of challenge is the same as challenge for people who cant see that.
Hopefully more and more mmos will start following the gw2/ff14 example and start treating everyone equally instead of trying to glority and treat mentally unhealthy people as special to get them more addicted.
If people try a raid not knowing what they're doing, fail a few times, figure out how to beat the raid, then go back and beat it, that's good. That's failing when you're bad, learning from it, getting better, and then succeeding because you're now good at the game. That's exactly the sort of thing that I want to happen.
The problem is when people who don't know what they're doing and are only halfway paying attention invariably win on the first try anyway. That's what I'm against. And that's the difficulty that most MMORPGs seem to be tuned to these days, at least outside of endgames that I'll never reach because you have to slog through a ton of awfulness to get there.
I'm not trying to exclude people from content. It isn't about gear at all. And it certainly isn't about endgame. I rarely reach the endgame in MMORPGs, anyway.
All that I want is to at least have an option to tune the game to an interesting difficulty. For a lot of MMORPGs, I'd be happy with an option to make mobs deal 2x or 3x or 5x damage to players in outdoor content, akin to LotRO's landscape difficulty. (In some games, I don't like nerfing player damage, as I want to have meaningful risk, but don't want things to be really slow.)
Make having the toggle on from the very start give a purely cosmetic title like in LotRO. Allow players to choose their own difficulty to make the game interesting for themselves. If someone else wants to clear everything on easy mode and get the same gear, I don't care. All that I want is the option to make the game interesting for myself. Because right now, making the game interesting is not an option in most MMORPGs.
I keep reading "I want more difficulty, I want others to go through that difficulty and I want others to git gud" as if you are somehow supposed to choose how OTHERS should experience or play the game.
Why do you want others to get better? This isnt your life, it is theirs, if anything them being bad is a benefit to you because you are more reliable and competent than most.
There is a reason most games and mmos have brain dead difficulty content and that is because you are a loud minority that refuses to acknowledge that, the vast majority of players dont even bother with forums, less so hardcore genre specific forums where people circlejerk over how great le good ol social design of the past was.
That is why we get brain dead difficulties like soloque LFR so people not only can experience the content the devs worked on, but to also give them something to do to get the rewards they find pretty or cool
All I keep reading here is that certain people feel entitled to telling how others should play and how they should experience the game.
A healthy person doesnt care about others, we ignore them and keep living our life.
If people want to join high end content and learn that is that should be THEIR CHOICE instead of forcing them by gatekeeping the cool things behind them, hell the core point of rpgs is numbers go up, therefore naturally everyone will want the highest piece of gear so NUMBERS GO UP, not because their self worth depends on having that piece of gear, not as a trophy, not as something special, just a tool that lets numbers go up.
If a person wants to do high end content they will go into it and learn, the noob isnt going to join the mythic raid group, that is usually the metaslave tryhard who has deluded themselves they are great cuz they play the meta and follow the guide X streamer told them to like brainless metaslaves. These people already believe they are decent players, they are not someone learning or new.
The casual person who is interested in trying out high end content is not going to join the most high end form of content and ruin your run if that is your reason why you want to force everyone to git gud.
A healthy person doesnt care about others, we ignore them and keep living our life.
Yet you seem to care an awful, awful, lot about others and how they feel. And instead of ignoring them you engage them head on, again and again, pretty much telling them how all of it works. Judging by your own definition you must be a very unhealthy person. Get well soon.
/Cheers, Lahnmir
'the only way he could nail it any better is if he used a cross.'
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
All I keep reading here is that certain people feel entitled to telling how others should play and how they should experience the game.
That's true, but not in the sense that you meant it. I keep saying that I want an option to turn up the difficulty for myself, starting very early in the game. Others should have the same option, but not be compelled to turn it on. If 90% turn up the difficulty and 10% don't, that's fine. If 10% turn it up and 90% don't, that's fine. I want the option to turn it up myself.
And you're apparently against that because you feel entitled to tell me how I should play and how I should experience the game.
I'm not against the existence of visual novels, idle games, and games of any other genre where it's basically impossible to fail. For that matter, there are even some such games that I like. But I want for there to also be games that offer more challenge than that. That used to be common in MMORPGs, and it isn't anymore.
I keep reading "I want more difficulty, I want others to go through that difficulty and I want others to git gud" as if you are somehow supposed to choose how OTHERS should experience or play the game.
Why do you want others to get better? This isnt your life, it is theirs, if anything them being bad is a benefit to you because you are more reliable and competent than most.
Your life is in the same space as my life, yes? We have a "common ground" that is shared by many, many other players.
Let me guess... You're from the "everyone gets a gold star" generation?
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse. - FARGIN_WAR
I keep reading "I want more difficulty, I want others to go through that difficulty and I want others to git gud" as if you are somehow supposed to choose how OTHERS should experience or play the game.
Why do you want others to get better? This isnt your life, it is theirs, if anything them being bad is a benefit to you because you are more reliable and competent than most.
Your life is in the same space as my life, yes? We have a "common ground" that is shared by many, many other players.
Let me guess... You're from the "everyone gets a gold star" generation?
To be honest, it really depends on the "win" mechanic.
I mean if the MMO wants to use Twitch Skill as their win mechanic, they need to accept that they will have a much smaller demographic of players that are there to play their game, as only the players with the twitch skills to be good at the game will bother to play it, since everyone else will realize they can't win, so they might as well pass on it.
If the win mechanic is persistence and time investment, then twitch skill should not be a issue, as that is not where the win mechanic sits and the players looking for a more twitch, higher skill bracket game, should go play something else.
Now make no mistake, both of them are a challenge in their own way, but very different from each other.
Just like there are massive difference between being a marathon runner and 100m sprinter, and seldom do they overlap.
The problem only arises when players come into a game that is not using Twitch Skill as the win metric and demand that it become more twitch skill focused for some asinine reason.
All that seems to happen in these cases is the game company that entertains these requests, looses money, as I have seen with GW2, very clearly. They tried to placate the people who cried for needing more challenge, and their income tanked hard, It was only after they made entire game revisions to make the game far more accessible to their players, that they started to increase their income again.
Egotism is the anesthetic that dullens the pain of stupidity, this is why when I try to beat my head against the stupidity of other people, I only hurt myself.
Let me guess... You're from the "everyone gets a gold star" generation?
I would say more of a "Video games are about being fun, not work"
But i guess many people from here are from the "If you fail to get a gold star in real life, getting one from a video game is just as good" generation xd
I keep saying that I want an option to turn up the difficulty for
myself, starting very early in the game. Others should have the same
option, but not be compelled to turn it on. If 90% turn up the
difficulty and 10% don't, that's fine. If 10% turn it up and 90% don't,
that's fine. I want the option to turn it up myself.
I would say if you merely want the option for YOURSELF, there is no issue with that, but your comments dont suggest the same
That's why challenge is essential. Playing
badly has to mean that you fail at something, at least sometimes.
Otherwise, there's no point in learning how to play, or even a
meaningful concept of getting better at the game.
This suggests you want others to get through that process, and that clearly goes well beyond just "for yourself".
Let me guess... You're from the "everyone gets a gold star" generation?
I would say more of a "Video games are about being fun, not work"
But i guess many people from here are from the "If you fail to get a gold star in real life, getting one from a video game is just as good" generation xd
ggests you want others to get through that process, and that clearly goes well beyond just "for yourself".
Define "fun." Does YOUR fun top MY (or others') fun?
Kind of missed on your attempt to use my "gold star" statement against me. I believe in standards. Don't you? There is a HUGE difference between single player games and multiplayer games, yes? To clarify, if I am running a 400 meter race, and you decide to run a 100 meter dash, should we be running the same event?
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse. - FARGIN_WAR
I keep reading "I want more difficulty, I want others to go through that difficulty and I want others to git gud" as if you are somehow supposed to choose how OTHERS should experience or play the game.
Why do you want others to get better? This isnt your life, it is theirs, if anything them being bad is a benefit to you because you are more reliable and competent than most.
Your life is in the same space as my life, yes? We have a "common ground" that is shared by many, many other players.
Let me guess... You're from the "everyone gets a gold star" generation?
To be honest, it really depends on the "win" mechanic.
I mean if the MMO wants to use Twitch Skill as their win mechanic, they need to accept that they will have a much smaller demographic of players that are there to play their game, as only the players with the twitch skills to be good at the game will bother to play it, since everyone else will realize they can't win, so they might as well pass on it.
If the win mechanic is persistence and time investment, then twitch skill should not be a issue, as that is not where the win mechanic sits and the players looking for a more twitch, higher skill bracket game, should go play something else.
Now make no mistake, both of them are a challenge in their own way, but very different from each other.
Just like there are massive difference between being a marathon runner and 100m sprinter, and seldom do they overlap.
The problem only arises when players come into a game that is not using Twitch Skill as the win metric and demand that it become more twitch skill focused for some asinine reason.
All that seems to happen in these cases is the game company that entertains these requests, looses money, as I have seen with GW2, very clearly. They tried to placate the people who cried for needing more challenge, and their income tanked hard, It was only after they made entire game revisions to make the game far more accessible to their players, that they started to increase their income again.
I would point out, twitch-based gameplay is immensely popular, more so than MMOs. MOBA, ARPG, shooters, even many survival games lean on the action-oriented combat.
It's not abnormal for that to show up more in MMOs as technology evolves to facilitate it.
It's also not mutually exclusive to more casual gameplay elements still being present, though it may dominate combat loops.
I'd additionally note though, that twitch skill does not directly correlate to depth or complexity of play. Even that can live on a sliding skill of challenge. Take Overwatch for example. Compared to other competitive games at launch, it was a very forgiving yet very fast-paced game. The large headshot colliders and heavy reliance of large-area skills, simplified the core gameplay dramatically.
But over time they have leaned the other direction, shrunk the hit colliders, and tuned the action skills to be less perpetual spam.
Warframe is another example in the opposite direction. Where it has much mechanical depth that accompanies a near breakneck pace to it's gameplay, and yet it's modern meta makes the game remarkably easy.
Twitch skill does but a certain bottleneck to approaching content, but it does not itself define the scope of challenge a game may pose.
Last point I would argue is twitch skill and more methodical styles of play are not actually mutually exclusive either. Blending higher action elements with tight control windows with an otherwise lighter pacing of the overall distribution of combat, plus more overarching strategic elements like having alternative options to approaching challenges beyond combat loops, goes a long way to mixing up such things.
The unfortunate side being how few games really focus on presenting any kind of challenge outside of a/the combat loop.
Let me guess... You're from the "everyone gets a gold star" generation?
I would say more of a "Video games are about being fun, not work"
But i guess many people from here are from the "If you fail to get a gold star in real life, getting one from a video game is just as good" generation xd
ggests you want others to get through that process, and that clearly goes well beyond just "for yourself".
Define "fun." Does YOUR fun top MY (or others') fun?
Kind of missed on your attempt to use my "gold star" statement against me. I believe in standards. Don't you? There is a HUGE difference between single player games and multiplayer games, yes? To clarify, if I am running a 400 meter race, and you decide to run a 100 meter dash, should we be running the same event?
This somehow reminds me of the people that would go to World Boss Events in GW2, and run around naked and only use 1 skill, and when the event was over fuss that it was too easy.
It's like, No shit it was easy dumbass, the other 40+ of us carried you.
On the flip side of that, no one was crying that getting the King Killer title was easy.
Which was rather ironic to me, as the Arena was a solo event, and the Wold Bosses are a group event, so maybe people do not realize how bad they really are in contrast to how good everyone else is.
Personally, when it comes to Open World Content, I don't see the need for difficulty, in fact the joy of that content is to explore, not needing to slog my way through one long ass shit fight after another.
Where if I wanted challenge, instance content (Dungeons)would be the best place to put it, and in that vein, I think DDO had the best system hands down.
Egotism is the anesthetic that dullens the pain of stupidity, this is why when I try to beat my head against the stupidity of other people, I only hurt myself.
I would qualify, a challenging fight does not need to be a long fight.
Calling the potential difficulty of open world content an aversion to "one long ass shit fight after another" mostly speaks to a bit of a different issue, that instead of challenge the game is offering blunt time sinks.
It's not a challenge or hard to spam a button waiting for a monster to die just because it has a large health pool. If you're actively engaging with a mob that will evade and counter your attacks, forcing you to adapt as well and predict their actions to overcome them, that actually offers some kind of challenge, a puzzle, to figure out and master.
Like the prior comment of mine, I'd point out this doesn't mean the game has to be fast paced and focused on twitch skill either. Can always accommodate styles of play based on preparation and shutting down mobs in order to prevent reaction, or make the windows for actions somewhat generous overall.
Allowing for varied approaches and being able to set one's own pace through the choice of mechanics they engage in is quite valuable and rare. Think it's something that proves hard for MMOs in particular because of how much the meta can guide large parts of a player base.
A Challenging Fight is often a long fight, because the Opponents are Evenly matched.
That does not mean, that every long fight is a challenging fight, only that Challenging Fights are often not fast fights.
As such, if I am going to go through some zone or area that is full of "challenging fights", they are going to be slogs, simply because the Mobs are evenly matched to my skill level, and thus cannot be quickly dispatched.
Just saying on that one.
Egotism is the anesthetic that dullens the pain of stupidity, this is why when I try to beat my head against the stupidity of other people, I only hurt myself.
You may want to time how long fights between trained opponents in any martial art or weapon actually takes.
Challenge does not mandate long fights in any way. On the subject of evenly matched opponents, the challenge is in breaking the balance. Be it a well timed CC, a counter, or some other mechanic.
The "slog" more to do with the forgiveness the game offers in allowing an upset to an engagement to decide a match. If you're seeing multiple shield slams, stuns, etc, then that's already informative that the devs have stretched the combat so that no single upset to a fight can decide the match.
That is entirely a gamified element, and is actually done to lower the overall skill ceiling since it allows for individual mistakes to be made without being fatal.
The more dragged out an individual fight is designed to be, the lower the overall challenge it often represents.
EDIT: Now this isn't an absolute, but it has rather few exceptions. An example of such is when mobs have multiple behavior and ability sets they rotate through so that you have to alter your own response. This is rare, and often only used with boss mobs. Even more so, it's often coupled with the health-sponge scaling since that's easier and cheaper on processing than making a mob actually respond to incoming attacks.
Anyone that has watched combat sports, like Boxing, UFC, Etc, knows that the shorter the fight, the more superior one of the contestants were, with the reverse also holding true, where the more evenly matched the competitors are, the longer they will duel.
Hell this also holds true for most team sports as well, case in point, in Football, while they may have to play for a fixed amount of innings when one team is clearly superior it's easy to see at the early onset who is going to win, and the rest of the game becomes mainly just a spectator show, and in some cases, not even a good show at that.
Egotism is the anesthetic that dullens the pain of stupidity, this is why when I try to beat my head against the stupidity of other people, I only hurt myself.
Anyone that has watched combat sports, like Boxing, UFC, Etc, knows that the shorter the fight, the more superior one of the contestants were, with the reverse also holding true, where the more evenly matched the competitors are, the longer they will duel.
Hell this also holds true for most team sports as well, case in point, in Football, while they may have to play for a fixed amount of innings when one team is clearly superior it's easy to see at the early onset who is going to win, and the rest of the game becomes mainly just a spectator show, and in some cases, not even a good show at that.
In real-life combat sports most of the attacks don't do anything at all because they get blocked or evaded. They aren't a good comparison to MMOs where even the badly losing party does damage with most of his attacks.
MMO combat, especially in PvE environment, is usually more like a running competition where all runners continuously cover distance (do damage), and the winner is whoever covers the required distance (does enough damage to deplete opponent's HP bar) first.
Boxing, UFC, etc, are all also fundamentally different as endurance sports. It's even a literal paid incentive in UFC with the likes of fight of the night. They are fundamentally designed to be dragged out brawls aimed for spectacle, not reflective of life or death combat. Especially not with weapons.
It's the literal exception compared to fencing, kendo, or near any other martial art where the focus is going to be kill (at least representatively when it comes to modern), not takedown. It's again the reason that the difference is similarly exposing an upset, not drawn out battles.
A very real example is the classic dueling with rapiers. Those were fundamentally short duels because all you need to win is one stab, and it didn't even have to be immediately fatal, as it was generally inevitably so.
EDIT: It's notable the other example was an admitted spectator sport as well. One really should not be building there expectations of how people fighting to the death compares to sports that have been expressly engineered and refined over time to maximize the fact they are a spectator sport.
But it's a good reference, we can look back in the history of football and actually see the sport used to not be so dragged out. We can also address an interesting point that with as dragged out as it is today, the actual time playing is a fraction of that, padded with half times, ads, replays, etc.
We can actually do the same for boxing and UFC. Look up the sort of averages over time for how long a fight goes. You'll find a pretty direct correlation where spectator sports want to run longer, because that's classically how you take up time slots for ads and with sit-down events incentivize purchases.
Be it boxing, UFC, or football. They have molded their representation around the expectations of viewership, spectators, and profit.
Not the premise of active participants engaging in at least the representation of a life or death scenario.
As such, if I am going to go through some zone or area that is full of "challenging fights", they are going to be slogs, simply because the Mobs are evenly matched to my skill level, and thus cannot be quickly dispatched.
I immediately thought about GW 2's level 80 zone Ruins of Orr zone on release. What a slog fest! Mobs spaced "just right" so you fought for every friggin' inch to reach your goal.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse. - FARGIN_WAR
As such, if I am going to go through some zone or area that is full of "challenging fights", they are going to be slogs, simply because the Mobs are evenly matched to my skill level, and thus cannot be quickly dispatched.
I immediately thought about GW 2's level 80 zone Ruins of Orr zone on release. What a slog fest! Mobs spaced "just right" so you fought for every friggin' inch to reach your goal.
It was like that when I started, not sure when it kinda of relaxed a bit, but it was one, not easy, fight, right after another, after another, like the agro range was set just so that you never really had any down time unless you were in a secured area.
I mean, there has also been some power creep since then too, so, I don't know, could have been a combo of both.
Equally so, HOT was also like that on launch, where trash mobs had breaker bars, and unless you were in a secured area, you will going to be constantly fighting. Needless to say, that did not go over well either, and they toned down the trash mobs by quite a bit, and spaced them out more, pretty much what they did with Orr, as well.
Egotism is the anesthetic that dullens the pain of stupidity, this is why when I try to beat my head against the stupidity of other people, I only hurt myself.
Comments
A less "levelled" player misses out on a lot of learning, about the game and tactics.
And it's just a lonely world to play in.
I wish there were something that would be done to keep communication open in the game world.
Once upon a time....
That's why challenge is essential. Playing badly has to mean that you fail at something, at least sometimes. Otherwise, there's no point in learning how to play, or even a meaningful concept of getting better at the game.
I'm inclined to agree pretty broadly, trhough it did remind me of a gripe I have. XD
I don't think that these mechanics aren't represented by modern games.
I do think though, in mirroring Quizz's point, many of them have been rendered irrelevant by the way gameplay has been balanced.
You only really engage in the use of particular skills in high-end gameplay for some titles, like trials or raids, and it's not consistent either since sometimes the challenge just boils down to "more DPS".
I think Warframe is a decent example of a game here which actually has a rather broad set of mechanics, that are largely not engaged with. We could be playing a squad game where CC, interrupts, heals, etc matters. However, we've had years of optimization that ultimately focuses on damage mitigation, or no selling damage outright, and massive amounts of AOE based DPS. The complexity is there in the gameplay, but the meta renders it irrelevant.
It's not a case of gambling against risk, rather it's pushing boundaries and expanding skill.
Almost completely antithetical to Ralph's narrative.
Also, apparently Ralph doesn't know what a Kaizo game is I guess.
AoE damage is well overblown as far as game design in modern games.
In UO, AoE would also damage your friends and any other players, so that was only used in rare cases (solo, or "the perfect opportunity").
The concept of timing is pretty well done in most good games, but in UO (again) it was a constant thing in all battles with any risk to them. Everything you do should have timing involved in the strategy.
And getting the timing right can feel very rewarding. Just as much as using that "one-off" (timers) extra powerful special, or any big hit or escape.
Having multiples of those moments in one battle is great stuff. It turns the tide of battle, and then wins those battles. I'm talking about all individual players, as opposed to the group strategies that are available in modern games.
Once upon a time....
The problem is when people who don't know what they're doing and are only halfway paying attention invariably win on the first try anyway. That's what I'm against. And that's the difficulty that most MMORPGs seem to be tuned to these days, at least outside of endgames that I'll never reach because you have to slog through a ton of awfulness to get there.
I'm not trying to exclude people from content. It isn't about gear at all. And it certainly isn't about endgame. I rarely reach the endgame in MMORPGs, anyway.
All that I want is to at least have an option to tune the game to an interesting difficulty. For a lot of MMORPGs, I'd be happy with an option to make mobs deal 2x or 3x or 5x damage to players in outdoor content, akin to LotRO's landscape difficulty. (In some games, I don't like nerfing player damage, as I want to have meaningful risk, but don't want things to be really slow.)
Make having the toggle on from the very start give a purely cosmetic title like in LotRO. Allow players to choose their own difficulty to make the game interesting for themselves. If someone else wants to clear everything on easy mode and get the same gear, I don't care. All that I want is the option to make the game interesting for myself. Because right now, making the game interesting is not an option in most MMORPGs.
I would remind you that this is a VIDEO GAME but I dont think it would be very helpful to you xD
Dang, the irony is palpable.
/Cheers,
Lahnmir
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
And you're apparently against that because you feel entitled to tell me how I should play and how I should experience the game.
I'm not against the existence of visual novels, idle games, and games of any other genre where it's basically impossible to fail. For that matter, there are even some such games that I like. But I want for there to also be games that offer more challenge than that. That used to be common in MMORPGs, and it isn't anymore.
I realize that I'm plucking this statement out of context, but I just wanted to point out that it looks remarkably awful if taken out of context.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
I mean if the MMO wants to use Twitch Skill as their win mechanic, they need to accept that they will have a much smaller demographic of players that are there to play their game, as only the players with the twitch skills to be good at the game will bother to play it, since everyone else will realize they can't win, so they might as well pass on it.
If the win mechanic is persistence and time investment, then twitch skill should not be a issue, as that is not where the win mechanic sits and the players looking for a more twitch, higher skill bracket game, should go play something else.
Now make no mistake, both of them are a challenge in their own way, but very different from each other.
Just like there are massive difference between being a marathon runner and 100m sprinter, and seldom do they overlap.
The problem only arises when players come into a game that is not using Twitch Skill as the win metric and demand that it become more twitch skill focused for some asinine reason.
All that seems to happen in these cases is the game company that entertains these requests, looses money, as I have seen with GW2, very clearly. They tried to placate the people who cried for needing more challenge, and their income tanked hard, It was only after they made entire game revisions to make the game far more accessible to their players, that they started to increase their income again.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
It's not abnormal for that to show up more in MMOs as technology evolves to facilitate it.
It's also not mutually exclusive to more casual gameplay elements still being present, though it may dominate combat loops.
I'd additionally note though, that twitch skill does not directly correlate to depth or complexity of play. Even that can live on a sliding skill of challenge. Take Overwatch for example. Compared to other competitive games at launch, it was a very forgiving yet very fast-paced game. The large headshot colliders and heavy reliance of large-area skills, simplified the core gameplay dramatically.
But over time they have leaned the other direction, shrunk the hit colliders, and tuned the action skills to be less perpetual spam.
Warframe is another example in the opposite direction. Where it has much mechanical depth that accompanies a near breakneck pace to it's gameplay, and yet it's modern meta makes the game remarkably easy.
Twitch skill does but a certain bottleneck to approaching content, but it does not itself define the scope of challenge a game may pose.
Last point I would argue is twitch skill and more methodical styles of play are not actually mutually exclusive either. Blending higher action elements with tight control windows with an otherwise lighter pacing of the overall distribution of combat, plus more overarching strategic elements like having alternative options to approaching challenges beyond combat loops, goes a long way to mixing up such things.
The unfortunate side being how few games really focus on presenting any kind of challenge outside of a/the combat loop.
It's like, No shit it was easy dumbass, the other 40+ of us carried you.
On the flip side of that, no one was crying that getting the King Killer title was easy.
Which was rather ironic to me, as the Arena was a solo event, and the Wold Bosses are a group event, so maybe people do not realize how bad they really are in contrast to how good everyone else is.
Personally, when it comes to Open World Content, I don't see the need for difficulty, in fact the joy of that content is to explore, not needing to slog my way through one long ass shit fight after another.
Where if I wanted challenge, instance content (Dungeons)would be the best place to put it, and in that vein, I think DDO had the best system hands down.
Calling the potential difficulty of open world content an aversion to "one long ass shit fight after another" mostly speaks to a bit of a different issue, that instead of challenge the game is offering blunt time sinks.
It's not a challenge or hard to spam a button waiting for a monster to die just because it has a large health pool. If you're actively engaging with a mob that will evade and counter your attacks, forcing you to adapt as well and predict their actions to overcome them, that actually offers some kind of challenge, a puzzle, to figure out and master.
Like the prior comment of mine, I'd point out this doesn't mean the game has to be fast paced and focused on twitch skill either. Can always accommodate styles of play based on preparation and shutting down mobs in order to prevent reaction, or make the windows for actions somewhat generous overall.
Allowing for varied approaches and being able to set one's own pace through the choice of mechanics they engage in is quite valuable and rare. Think it's something that proves hard for MMOs in particular because of how much the meta can guide large parts of a player base.
That does not mean, that every long fight is a challenging fight, only that Challenging Fights are often not fast fights.
As such, if I am going to go through some zone or area that is full of "challenging fights", they are going to be slogs, simply because the Mobs are evenly matched to my skill level, and thus cannot be quickly dispatched.
Just saying on that one.
Challenge does not mandate long fights in any way. On the subject of evenly matched opponents, the challenge is in breaking the balance. Be it a well timed CC, a counter, or some other mechanic.
The "slog" more to do with the forgiveness the game offers in allowing an upset to an engagement to decide a match. If you're seeing multiple shield slams, stuns, etc, then that's already informative that the devs have stretched the combat so that no single upset to a fight can decide the match.
That is entirely a gamified element, and is actually done to lower the overall skill ceiling since it allows for individual mistakes to be made without being fatal.
The more dragged out an individual fight is designed to be, the lower the overall challenge it often represents.
EDIT: Now this isn't an absolute, but it has rather few exceptions. An example of such is when mobs have multiple behavior and ability sets they rotate through so that you have to alter your own response. This is rare, and often only used with boss mobs. Even more so, it's often coupled with the health-sponge scaling since that's easier and cheaper on processing than making a mob actually respond to incoming attacks.
Hell this also holds true for most team sports as well, case in point, in Football, while they may have to play for a fixed amount of innings when one team is clearly superior it's easy to see at the early onset who is going to win, and the rest of the game becomes mainly just a spectator show, and in some cases, not even a good show at that.
MMO combat, especially in PvE environment, is usually more like a running competition where all runners continuously cover distance (do damage), and the winner is whoever covers the required distance (does enough damage to deplete opponent's HP bar) first.
It's the literal exception compared to fencing, kendo, or near any other martial art where the focus is going to be kill (at least representatively when it comes to modern), not takedown. It's again the reason that the difference is similarly exposing an upset, not drawn out battles.
A very real example is the classic dueling with rapiers. Those were fundamentally short duels because all you need to win is one stab, and it didn't even have to be immediately fatal, as it was generally inevitably so.
EDIT: It's notable the other example was an admitted spectator sport as well. One really should not be building there expectations of how people fighting to the death compares to sports that have been expressly engineered and refined over time to maximize the fact they are a spectator sport.
But it's a good reference, we can look back in the history of football and actually see the sport used to not be so dragged out. We can also address an interesting point that with as dragged out as it is today, the actual time playing is a fraction of that, padded with half times, ads, replays, etc.
We can actually do the same for boxing and UFC. Look up the sort of averages over time for how long a fight goes. You'll find a pretty direct correlation where spectator sports want to run longer, because that's classically how you take up time slots for ads and with sit-down events incentivize purchases.
Be it boxing, UFC, or football. They have molded their representation around the expectations of viewership, spectators, and profit.
Not the premise of active participants engaging in at least the representation of a life or death scenario.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
I mean, there has also been some power creep since then too, so, I don't know, could have been a combo of both.
Equally so, HOT was also like that on launch, where trash mobs had breaker bars, and unless you were in a secured area, you will going to be constantly fighting. Needless to say, that did not go over well either, and they toned down the trash mobs by quite a bit, and spaced them out more, pretty much what they did with Orr, as well.