If it takes a year to fully understand the crafting system then that is a bad crafting system, it is inefiecient, you can allow people many options to make whatever their heart's desire and make it simple to understand. Having to make a spread sheet to figure out which combination of materials will make the best whatever isn't hard in the least, it is just time consuming and boring.
So you're essentially saying in the last half of this quote deciphering formulas isn't hard? People get paid a lot of money to crack formulas and create formulas that can't be cracked because it takes a lot of training and skill to figure out that type of math. I personally have fun making spreadsheets if you don't try playing a game that doesn't involve that kind of depth and challenge. Yet I don't see what's the point of even considering a different game, because most games you can get by just fine on just intuition alone.
Likewise impossing harsh death penalties doesn't make the game hard, again it is just time consuming and boring.
One of the posters above you made a reasonable point in how this can be viewed as challenging. Grinding is more of an endurance contest between those who can put up with the strain of levelling/skilling up over those who can't. Death penalties adds to the challenge of grinding because mistakes put you behind those who are more careful and adds to the tension involved with grinding. Still as that poster mentioned it's a lazy game design. IMO not only is it lazy it's flawed because even those who have the time to grind they become more inclined to quit with each death penalty inflicted on them.
Thanks everybody for keeping this relatively flame-free.
I'll move onto a hypothetical now. If there was a game designed that:
Had a complex and in-depth crafitng system where the item's quality and durability outcome was affected by character skill, type of materials and quality of materials used, but did NOT have a pointless, repetitive mini-grind to advance...
Allowed players to completely customize every aspect of their character's development, by choosing where level advancement points go, where skill points are allocated and having differing and exclusive options (taking one skill makes it impossible to choose this other skill) as to what special skills their characters have...
Had extraneous, non-combat but fully-developed systems such as animal breeding and training...
A non-class-dependent combat and non-combat pet and mount system, supported by the above animal breeding/training system...
A world large enough to support non-instanced player housing, player shops, player vendors and entire player settlements, but with enough transportation options that you don't wind up with nobody being able to find each other...
A skill-based character advancement system...
More player-appearance options than you can shake a stick at...
A strategic combat system where one player's actions can affect another's outcome in a group (this attack causes this, which can be exploited by this)...
A strategic magic system that allows you to essentially construct each spell on the fly from basic elemental and metamagic abilites...
Is this the kind of game you'd buy and play? If not, what would you like to see added/removed from the list?
You just pretty much described Pre-Cu SWG......It was my first MMORPG and I pay the price for that. I have yet to find something equal to that experience. I currently play LOTRO and am enjoying it, but, it is no Pre-CU SWG. I would buy the above described game in a second....put it in a sci-fi setting.....all the better.
Yep, that's pretty much Pre-CU SWG. And it did spoil a lot of us
I think it's deeper than that even. You mention a deep crafting system, such as the one SWG had. But - it also had many different types of crafting profession, that appealed to different types of crafters. Same with the combat.
There are more variations of challenges for people, and what will challenge on individual in the beginning might be trivial after a while, and they will want to move on to something more advanced. The original design incorporated those things really well. (They just didnt get to finish the game before it was pushed live and although the original designers put the finishing touches on a few important things like the transportation system and player housing/towns, they left after launch, and unfortunatly, it was mismanaged since then)
Some people did like the hunting for rare resources (Bioengineer), some liked mass manufacturing with generic resources and competing on volume and price (master artisan), generic resources in large quantities and competing on selection and price (architect) som liked mass manufacturing with rare/specific resources AND competing on volume, price and quality (chef, BE components, doctors), some liked using generic resources and competing on personal flavor (tailors, with 250 different clothes and 256 colors, a lot of clothes being 2, even 3 and 4 colored, stocking everything was impossible), some liked special rare resources, quality, personal choice and reputation for reliability and a welstocked shop with different choices (armorsmith, weaponsmith).... have I forgotten someone?
And this went also to the combat system. There is so much to say about it, but - being good enough at combat was dead easy. Everyone, no matter how casual, could be that. To be good at PvP you had to be a bit more knowledgeble and interested in your profession, in the different aspects of the game to know what you needed to use for the different tools (spice, buffs, food, drink, different resists and attacks in armor and weapons). To the advanced player, the only real competing is of course in PvP one-on-one, and there was the Jedi for the very advanced ones. (wishing they had kept the original jedi system though, incl permadeath)
You can say a lot of bad things about SWG, but it mostly come down to that they never finished it. They needed another 6 months to put in the content people complained about not having, they needed to finish the professions which they didn't get time to do (smuggler, not to mention squad leader, there might have been 20 between all servers as they were so neglected, so you never hear about those, hardly even amongst the SWG vets), and putting the original jedi system in place. (whatever that was, but it wasn't the holo)
I think the significant thing is.... they scrapped all this, in favor of trying to reach for WoW mass appeal.
I think what is missing from a lot of games these days, after WoW took off, is depth.
What designers should learn from WoW imo, is that people like being able to get into the game easily and quickly. Face it a lot of the time when you come to a new game, even moving around and using the UI is a challenge. That doesn't mean that it should stop there. Take the new player experience from Wow (ironically, the NGE designers when ruining the original SWG was trying to do just that) and when people are bored with that - have a whole range of other challenges lined up for them to move on to, digging deeper into what they find interesting in the game. (And no, I don't mean raiding).
Most people don't enjoy failing, especially repeatedly, and its very hard to design a system which allows everyone to succeed while still providing challenge. A good game will allow everyone to ease into the game, and once in there, "pick their poison" - and find the challenges in an area where they do feel comfortable failing over and over again, to finally succeed and get that sense of accomplishment.
There is nothing difficult about MMOs. As a matter of fact I'm starting to look at them in a literal sense. Literally... They are nothing more than huge time sinks to do exactly that: Pass time. Some are more, some less. The difficulty as it calls just adds up to being more of a time sink. You spend countless hours hitting hotkeys to watch a colored bar called an "xp bar" cross the screen to make that number next to your name become greater. Why? In the end did you solve anything? Did you win? Did you lose? No. You acomplished basically nothing. Sure. I guess your character has a fancy dancy weapon that glows or some crap like that. But after you get that sword of lookatmeiminternetcool does it really satisfy you? I used to love mmo's. But very recently as I was watching tv, I thought to myself.. "Why don't you like them much anymore or have more fun reading up on them then actually playing them?". It's just that. Everything I've mentioned above. I get more enjoyment these days out of walking my dog or slapping my friend across his big fat face after scoring a goal on him on the 360. Or even as far as taking my girlfriend to the mall and watching the joy on her face as she shuffles thru clothes in a store. Cause in the end.. I actually achieve something from this. I realize not everyone shares my opinion or might even call me a troll. So be it. But its what I think. And yes. I'm very competetive.
QFT , herein lies the truth to mmos. Read and learn from this.
There is nothing difficult about MMOs. As a matter of fact I'm starting to look at them in a literal sense. Literally... They are nothing more than huge time sinks to do exactly that: Pass time. Some are more, some less. The difficulty as it calls just adds up to being more of a time sink. You spend countless hours hitting hotkeys to watch a colored bar called an "xp bar" cross the screen to make that number next to your name become greater. Why? In the end did you solve anything? Did you win? Did you lose? No. You acomplished basically nothing. Sure. I guess your character has a fancy dancy weapon that glows or some crap like that. But after you get that sword of lookatmeiminternetcool does it really satisfy you? I used to love mmo's. But very recently as I was watching tv, I thought to myself.. "Why don't you like them much anymore or have more fun reading up on them then actually playing them?". It's just that. Everything I've mentioned above. I get more enjoyment these days out of walking my dog or slapping my friend across his big fat face after scoring a goal on him on the 360. Or even as far as taking my girlfriend to the mall and watching the joy on her face as she shuffles thru clothes in a store. Cause in the end.. I actually achieve something from this. I realize not everyone shares my opinion or might even call me a troll. So be it. But its what I think. And yes. I'm very competetive.
QFT , herein lies the truth to mmos. Read and learn from this.
i'll second that
I'll third that.
Being a computer science major has made me very cynical of level based games.
Sitting around trying to increment integer values seems ridiculous.
Especially when its 20 hours to increment say.... 69 to 70.
Games need to move away from level based progress.
1. PvP) a challenge to me is chess - simple to learn, difficult to master, and every time you play there is always something different as any game can played literally millions of different aways with wide range of combinations of attack, defense, and counter attack. So that's just it. MMO IMO should abandon leveling for skills. There should be numerous skills centered around combinations of attatck, defense, and counter attack like chess. Most MMOs don't have this combinatory thinking as most classes of characters simply need their DPS maxed out and then spam those 1 - 3 special kill buttons and that's really about it. DPS IMO is way overrated as it makes for dull games where you only have to rely on time sinks for gear grinding instead of skill. I'm speaking of PvP encounters of course and as for PvE encounters I think mobs and bosses should have more abilities for a more dynamic encounter. So that is what a challenge means to me. I really think a skill based game is more casual friendly since you can compete and be competitive whenever you have time and do well if you are good instead of pledging allegiance to some MMO's time sinked game.
2. Economy) again, time sinking grinding for crafting is not challenging. What I would like to see is more of an automated gathering and manufacturing design where you become a manager of your resources and production. By this I mean sort of like an RTS or some business games like Captilism 2. I think it would be more fun to run your in-game business then to be a slave to it through manual, repetitive resource grinding. This is also beneficial for the casual player IMO as you can automate and eliminate the insane crafting grinds. As a manager while your resources are being automatically gathered and assembled you'll have then have time to do other business stuff like negotiating with other players, learning new blueprints, etc. Economy can be a massive discussion but you get what I'm talking about.
3. Game world) I see PvP only and PvE only servers as unnecessary since I think PvP and PvE should be able to coexist on same server by having a massive game with maybe 6 large continents where perhaps 3 are PvE and 3 are PvP but players in this game world can interact no matter what continent you are on and you can travel to any. The PvP continents should be conquerable where after a capital has been taken that PvP continent resets and you play again. PvE would be where you can play through story lines and quests, missions, etc. You should be able to select any starting zone whether it be on a PvP or PvE server but you are not restricted to PvP or PvE only continents. And there would NO instanced battlegrounds. This makes for a challenge as you will not be restricted to static game worlds where your actions don't mean anything. Everyone's actions in this game world directly effect the faction your fighting for such as your guild and NPC nation you chose.
So challenges can be designed into a game that would benefit casual player base who derive fun from using skill instead of massive time sinks.
RPG's are inherently free of player skills, that is much of the point, it is supposed to be the characters skills that determines the outcome, not your own.
Even when playing PnP rpg's this is true, you can not have a dumb character come up with cold fusion, or a weak character lift cars, etc.
Allthough in PnP games intelligence plays a much bigger role then it ever can in an computer envíronment, you are still bound by the character you play.
Skill then becomes how well you can put yourself into the position of your character and act accordingly.
It toook more skill to play a flawed or weak or mentally deranged charcter then a strong and healthy one.
This travels trough to mmorpg's, but even more so, with a computer you have rules that are extremely rigid, there is little to no way to be inventive or bend these rules.
Of pretty much all computer games mmorpg's takes the least human skill, it do take some social skills, and this is were some people can shine but other then that you can pick pretty much any adventure game, sports game or shooter and it will take more skill.
Because these games are to a much greater extent geared towards your own personal skills and not to you avatars.
I find this whole "carebear" VS "hardcore" discussion stupid, the difference between the two, in any human terms is inconsequential, its like someone that can wiggle their toes 10 times a second not only take great pride in this, but also trashes the poor sods that can only do it 7 times.
Anyone who feels these games are at all challenging have surely not faced life in any shape or form becuase in comparison to such a thing as driving your car they are no "harder" then growing nails.
PvP is really the only part that is even borderline skill dependant, because you face real humans, but still in comparison to soething like quake or counterstrike or starcraft ( or inut any FPS/RTS ), it is like tic tac toe.
I play these games for relaxation, exploration, socialisisation and hopefully some good storytelling.
If I want to put my "skills" up to a test these things are bad indication of their level, I start up Q4 or go out and play some tennis to do that.
Great thread by the way, many good ideas and opinions, from all sides.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Originally posted by Jerek_
I wonder if you honestly even believe what you type, or if you live in a made up world of facts. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Anyone who feels these games are at all challenging have surely not faced life in any shape or form becuase in comparison to such a thing as driving your car they are no "harder" then growing nails.
So you've never wiped or died in a mmorpg?
PvP is really the only part that is even borderline skill dependant, because you face real humans, but still in comparison to soething like quake or counterstrike or starcraft ( or inut any FPS/RTS ), it is like tic tac toe.
counterstrike? the most single-dimensional fps there is.
I play these games for relaxation, exploration, socialisisation and hopefully some good storytelling.
So you don't have any skill in storytelling?
There is skill required in everything, have you ever had a good tank or a bad tank or a good healer or a bad healer. This alone points to a difference in levels of ability.
Of course mmorpgs are not the most skillful games around but to downright rule out any skill in the game when you have a set of abilities that everyone will use differently and to rule out the evidence of any challenge when there are many challenging situations just many people opt for non-challenging situations. An example of which you do content designed for 5 people with 2 people, too right you're going to find that challenging. To suggest otherwise is just being plain bigoted.
I'm amazed people don't challenge themselves in mmorpgs and then complain afterwards about a lack of challenge, well duh. I'm amazed people look back on WoW and remember it as a walkover. Sorry what, did you do any instances? Did you not ever die? Oh you never did? thats probably because you took on whatever was easy. You probably soloed to the end level taking on one mob at a time using the best equipment you had. So yeah I think I'm just going to dismiss those who have never found challenge as people who actually don't want and avoid challenge just so they can beat their chest afterwards that the game has no challenge. Whats even more laughable are people who choose the simplest classes and whine about lack of challenge, sorry you don't find challenge with a rogue, why don't you play another class?
Edit: I retract part of this. I think part of the reason(ignoring the silly people who bigg themselves up, I could do this too- I could play a few games and beat people before they've even started but this isn't what I'm trying to do) people find no challenge is because the situations are repeated so many times that the challenge is lost. The game simply becomes a game of routines and sequences and fighting against PVE which is the same over and over the game does lose its challenge especially compared to PvP where as opponents will have a lot more variety it will be a notch up over PvE. I think ignoring the simple classes like the auto-attack classes in EQ or the simple classes in WoW like a rogue or a hunter that had you not played any of the classes before and shoved into a level 60 PUG you WILL find challenge. But, as you play more and more of the class that challenge aspect is lost. But I still think a lot of people who complain about it actually don't challenge themselves.
Things like the hunter's epic bow quest in WoW.. and if some ppl remember a few quests are with Time counting down but it's really a joke because you have alot of time to complete those quests... so basicly.. take the concept of the hunter epic bow quest in wow + quests on time can make an MMO challenging.. the thing is alot of ppl play mmos to relax so a challenging mmo will be unique
World of Warcraft is a proof that MMORPG quality should affect schedule/budget and not the other way around.
Challenge is a highly subjective perception. Period. You will most likely not find two people who define "challenge" in MMOGs alike. Sure, a challenge per se is something you have to put effort in to aquire - The answer is anything that takes time, thinking or reaction. In this definition, biochemistry is a challenge, but its boring and dull and very much what you would not want in an MMO.
So challenge in an MMO is defined as "motivatingly rewarding/punishing". And this would be defined as a balance between what you have to put into a task to get a reward and what you lose if you fail. And this again, is immensely subjective, as there are - more so in every day life - people who are success-motivated and people who are defeat-motivated and any color in between the two.
Means. I for myself am HIGHLY success-motivated. If I fail at a task I tend to get angry and frustrated, where as when I succeed, I never rest and work pretty hard to get another success.
People that are defeat-motivated are the other way around, they really dig into challenges and try over and over again to achieve the goals, while, when they achieved it, are most likely to be content with what they've got.
If you look closely you can pretty much put most success/fail mechanics of games in one of the two categories. Examples for success motivation: WoW, Guildwars, Everquest2; for defeat-motivation: Everquest, EvE-Online or heavy PvP games like early UO.
Meridion
EDIT: oh, plus, there are externally and internally attributing people. Meaning some people tend to blame t hemselves for success/failure, and some people who tend to blame circumstance or other people...
Comments
So you're essentially saying in the last half of this quote deciphering formulas isn't hard? People get paid a lot of money to crack formulas and create formulas that can't be cracked because it takes a lot of training and skill to figure out that type of math. I personally have fun making spreadsheets if you don't try playing a game that doesn't involve that kind of depth and challenge. Yet I don't see what's the point of even considering a different game, because most games you can get by just fine on just intuition alone.
One of the posters above you made a reasonable point in how this can be viewed as challenging. Grinding is more of an endurance contest between those who can put up with the strain of levelling/skilling up over those who can't. Death penalties adds to the challenge of grinding because mistakes put you behind those who are more careful and adds to the tension involved with grinding. Still as that poster mentioned it's a lazy game design. IMO not only is it lazy it's flawed because even those who have the time to grind they become more inclined to quit with each death penalty inflicted on them.
You just pretty much described Pre-Cu SWG......It was my first MMORPG and I pay the price for that. I have yet to find something equal to that experience. I currently play LOTRO and am enjoying it, but, it is no Pre-CU SWG. I would buy the above described game in a second....put it in a sci-fi setting.....all the better.
Yep, that's pretty much Pre-CU SWG. And it did spoil a lot of us
I think it's deeper than that even. You mention a deep crafting system, such as the one SWG had. But - it also had many different types of crafting profession, that appealed to different types of crafters. Same with the combat.
There are more variations of challenges for people, and what will challenge on individual in the beginning might be trivial after a while, and they will want to move on to something more advanced. The original design incorporated those things really well. (They just didnt get to finish the game before it was pushed live and although the original designers put the finishing touches on a few important things like the transportation system and player housing/towns, they left after launch, and unfortunatly, it was mismanaged since then)
Some people did like the hunting for rare resources (Bioengineer), some liked mass manufacturing with generic resources and competing on volume and price (master artisan), generic resources in large quantities and competing on selection and price (architect) som liked mass manufacturing with rare/specific resources AND competing on volume, price and quality (chef, BE components, doctors), some liked using generic resources and competing on personal flavor (tailors, with 250 different clothes and 256 colors, a lot of clothes being 2, even 3 and 4 colored, stocking everything was impossible), some liked special rare resources, quality, personal choice and reputation for reliability and a welstocked shop with different choices (armorsmith, weaponsmith).... have I forgotten someone?
And this went also to the combat system. There is so much to say about it, but - being good enough at combat was dead easy. Everyone, no matter how casual, could be that. To be good at PvP you had to be a bit more knowledgeble and interested in your profession, in the different aspects of the game to know what you needed to use for the different tools (spice, buffs, food, drink, different resists and attacks in armor and weapons). To the advanced player, the only real competing is of course in PvP one-on-one, and there was the Jedi for the very advanced ones. (wishing they had kept the original jedi system though, incl permadeath)
You can say a lot of bad things about SWG, but it mostly come down to that they never finished it. They needed another 6 months to put in the content people complained about not having, they needed to finish the professions which they didn't get time to do (smuggler, not to mention squad leader, there might have been 20 between all servers as they were so neglected, so you never hear about those, hardly even amongst the SWG vets), and putting the original jedi system in place. (whatever that was, but it wasn't the holo)
I think the significant thing is.... they scrapped all this, in favor of trying to reach for WoW mass appeal.
I think what is missing from a lot of games these days, after WoW took off, is depth.
What designers should learn from WoW imo, is that people like being able to get into the game easily and quickly. Face it a lot of the time when you come to a new game, even moving around and using the UI is a challenge. That doesn't mean that it should stop there. Take the new player experience from Wow (ironically, the NGE designers when ruining the original SWG was trying to do just that) and when people are bored with that - have a whole range of other challenges lined up for them to move on to, digging deeper into what they find interesting in the game. (And no, I don't mean raiding).
Most people don't enjoy failing, especially repeatedly, and its very hard to design a system which allows everyone to succeed while still providing challenge. A good game will allow everyone to ease into the game, and once in there, "pick their poison" - and find the challenges in an area where they do feel comfortable failing over and over again, to finally succeed and get that sense of accomplishment.
Depth and choice
I'll third that.
Being a computer science major has made me very cynical of level based games.
Sitting around trying to increment integer values seems ridiculous.
Especially when its 20 hours to increment say.... 69 to 70.
Games need to move away from level based progress.
1. PvP) a challenge to me is chess - simple to learn, difficult to master, and every time you play there is always something different as any game can played literally millions of different aways with wide range of combinations of attack, defense, and counter attack. So that's just it. MMO IMO should abandon leveling for skills. There should be numerous skills centered around combinations of attatck, defense, and counter attack like chess. Most MMOs don't have this combinatory thinking as most classes of characters simply need their DPS maxed out and then spam those 1 - 3 special kill buttons and that's really about it. DPS IMO is way overrated as it makes for dull games where you only have to rely on time sinks for gear grinding instead of skill. I'm speaking of PvP encounters of course and as for PvE encounters I think mobs and bosses should have more abilities for a more dynamic encounter. So that is what a challenge means to me. I really think a skill based game is more casual friendly since you can compete and be competitive whenever you have time and do well if you are good instead of pledging allegiance to some MMO's time sinked game.
2. Economy) again, time sinking grinding for crafting is not challenging. What I would like to see is more of an automated gathering and manufacturing design where you become a manager of your resources and production. By this I mean sort of like an RTS or some business games like Captilism 2. I think it would be more fun to run your in-game business then to be a slave to it through manual, repetitive resource grinding. This is also beneficial for the casual player IMO as you can automate and eliminate the insane crafting grinds. As a manager while your resources are being automatically gathered and assembled you'll have then have time to do other business stuff like negotiating with other players, learning new blueprints, etc. Economy can be a massive discussion but you get what I'm talking about.
3. Game world) I see PvP only and PvE only servers as unnecessary since I think PvP and PvE should be able to coexist on same server by having a massive game with maybe 6 large continents where perhaps 3 are PvE and 3 are PvP but players in this game world can interact no matter what continent you are on and you can travel to any. The PvP continents should be conquerable where after a capital has been taken that PvP continent resets and you play again. PvE would be where you can play through story lines and quests, missions, etc. You should be able to select any starting zone whether it be on a PvP or PvE server but you are not restricted to PvP or PvE only continents. And there would NO instanced battlegrounds. This makes for a challenge as you will not be restricted to static game worlds where your actions don't mean anything. Everyone's actions in this game world directly effect the faction your fighting for such as your guild and NPC nation you chose.
So challenges can be designed into a game that would benefit casual player base who derive fun from using skill instead of massive time sinks.
RPG's are inherently free of player skills, that is much of the point, it is supposed to be the characters skills that determines the outcome, not your own.
Even when playing PnP rpg's this is true, you can not have a dumb character come up with cold fusion, or a weak character lift cars, etc.
Allthough in PnP games intelligence plays a much bigger role then it ever can in an computer envíronment, you are still bound by the character you play.
Skill then becomes how well you can put yourself into the position of your character and act accordingly.
It toook more skill to play a flawed or weak or mentally deranged charcter then a strong and healthy one.
This travels trough to mmorpg's, but even more so, with a computer you have rules that are extremely rigid, there is little to no way to be inventive or bend these rules.
Of pretty much all computer games mmorpg's takes the least human skill, it do take some social skills, and this is were some people can shine but other then that you can pick pretty much any adventure game, sports game or shooter and it will take more skill.
Because these games are to a much greater extent geared towards your own personal skills and not to you avatars.
I find this whole "carebear" VS "hardcore" discussion stupid, the difference between the two, in any human terms is inconsequential, its like someone that can wiggle their toes 10 times a second not only take great pride in this, but also trashes the poor sods that can only do it 7 times.
Anyone who feels these games are at all challenging have surely not faced life in any shape or form becuase in comparison to such a thing as driving your car they are no "harder" then growing nails.
PvP is really the only part that is even borderline skill dependant, because you face real humans, but still in comparison to soething like quake or counterstrike or starcraft ( or inut any FPS/RTS ), it is like tic tac toe.
I play these games for relaxation, exploration, socialisisation and hopefully some good storytelling.
If I want to put my "skills" up to a test these things are bad indication of their level, I start up Q4 or go out and play some tennis to do that.
Great thread by the way, many good ideas and opinions, from all sides.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by Jerek_
I wonder if you honestly even believe what you type, or if you live in a made up world of facts.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So you've never wiped or died in a mmorpg?
counterstrike? the most single-dimensional fps there is. So you don't have any skill in storytelling?There is skill required in everything, have you ever had a good tank or a bad tank or a good healer or a bad healer. This alone points to a difference in levels of ability.
Of course mmorpgs are not the most skillful games around but to downright rule out any skill in the game when you have a set of abilities that everyone will use differently and to rule out the evidence of any challenge when there are many challenging situations just many people opt for non-challenging situations. An example of which you do content designed for 5 people with 2 people, too right you're going to find that challenging. To suggest otherwise is just being plain bigoted.
I'm amazed people don't challenge themselves in mmorpgs and then complain afterwards about a lack of challenge, well duh. I'm amazed people look back on WoW and remember it as a walkover. Sorry what, did you do any instances? Did you not ever die? Oh you never did? thats probably because you took on whatever was easy. You probably soloed to the end level taking on one mob at a time using the best equipment you had. So yeah I think I'm just going to dismiss those who have never found challenge as people who actually don't want and avoid challenge just so they can beat their chest afterwards that the game has no challenge. Whats even more laughable are people who choose the simplest classes and whine about lack of challenge, sorry you don't find challenge with a rogue, why don't you play another class?
Edit: I retract part of this. I think part of the reason(ignoring the silly people who bigg themselves up, I could do this too- I could play a few games and beat people before they've even started but this isn't what I'm trying to do) people find no challenge is because the situations are repeated so many times that the challenge is lost. The game simply becomes a game of routines and sequences and fighting against PVE which is the same over and over the game does lose its challenge especially compared to PvP where as opponents will have a lot more variety it will be a notch up over PvE. I think ignoring the simple classes like the auto-attack classes in EQ or the simple classes in WoW like a rogue or a hunter that had you not played any of the classes before and shoved into a level 60 PUG you WILL find challenge. But, as you play more and more of the class that challenge aspect is lost. But I still think a lot of people who complain about it actually don't challenge themselves.
World of Warcraft is a proof that MMORPG quality should affect schedule/budget and not the other way around.
So challenge in an MMO is defined as "motivatingly rewarding/punishing". And this would be defined as a balance between what you have to put into a task to get a reward and what you lose if you fail. And this again, is immensely subjective, as there are - more so in every day life - people who are success-motivated and people who are defeat-motivated and any color in between the two.
Means. I for myself am HIGHLY success-motivated. If I fail at a task I tend to get angry and frustrated, where as when I succeed, I never rest and work pretty hard to get another success.
People that are defeat-motivated are the other way around, they really dig into challenges and try over and over again to achieve the goals, while, when they achieved it, are most likely to be content with what they've got.
If you look closely you can pretty much put most success/fail mechanics of games in one of the two categories. Examples for success motivation: WoW, Guildwars, Everquest2; for defeat-motivation: Everquest, EvE-Online or heavy PvP games like early UO.
Meridion
EDIT: oh, plus, there are externally and internally attributing people. Meaning some people tend to blame t hemselves for success/failure, and some people who tend to blame circumstance or other people...