Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Let's talk dungeons
Scottc
Member Posts: 680
I think a lot about what I like and dislike about MMORPGs, some of which may or may not apply to other people. In most MMORPGs that I've played, dungeons are simply holes in the ground filled with monsters. They tend to be linear and lack any challenge to get to the end of them.
Why haven't MMOs learned from singleplayer games? In The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, there were pressure plates that you had to hold down to open a door, which meant dragging physics objects onto them, lighting up a number of fire sticks to progress, hidden switches and levers, clearing out a room before being allowed to progress, and many other things...
I've played one MMORPG that actually had these sorts of mechanisms that make dungeons more interesting which was Asheron's Call. I recall one dungeon where 3 players must stand on pressure plates at the same time to open a door to advance. Once through, a lever on the other side was able to control the door for the other players to get through. Other things included traps, such as one that would debuff you to lightning damage followed by another that would shoot a lightning bolt at you which did significant damage, as well as traps that removed all of your protective spells. There were jumping puzzles which could be quite difficult for some people. Finally, environmental obstacles, such as an area where boulders were constantly falling in a pattern, two hits and you're dead. Of course I'm tired of that game and the community has gone to shit.
Were there other games that had interesting challenging non linear dungeons like this? What am I missing out on? If you have any cool ideas for making dungeons more interesting, post em here, I'd love to see what other people can come up with. Hell, even contribute with your favorite MMO (or singleplayer) dungeon experience.
Comments
Why aren't MMO Dungeons more than just corridors with monsters in them?
That's easy:
Gamefaqs
Stratics
Various Game specific Wikis
Et All
Why bother making a bunch of puzzles if no one is going to take the time to actually figure them out. The fact that people are going straight to the FAQs before even playing through a single player dungeon is proof that the majority of people don't like puzzles.
Try DDO, in one of the quest there is a puzzle that took me 1 hour to solve. Was alo of fun
If WoW = The Beatles
and WAR = Led Zeppelin
Then LotrO = Pink Floyd
I thought Lord of the Rings Online had some interesting ideas for dungeons and boss fights. I remember one area where everyone was split into different cells, then were trapped there and had to fight against something alone to get back out. The boss fights were interesting too, such as the one in Barad Gularan where you had to take an item from each of the previous smaller bosses and use them in the right order on different parts of the floor to be able to fight the main boss.
That game had a lot of things right with regards to group play, it's such a shame they made so much of the game soloable. If it was a game focused mostly on grouping (which it should have been, hence the Fellowship idea) it would have been the ultimate MMO.
By that thinking, why do MMORPGs bother to give raid bosses any ability aside from an automatic attack? After all, the behaviors will be posted on those very websites showing exactly how to survive and win the encounter. Why bother introducing any new content at all? The fact is that it's there to discover, and despite some people being unable to handle figuring stuff out for themselves, there are many players who will not look up a walkthrough and try to figure it out themselves because it challenges them.
In asherons call 2 you had to split sometimes partys(fellowships) to solve puzzles to advance in dungeons and sometimes dungeon where very complex puzzels not just simple ones AC2 was famous for that.
Games played:AC1-Darktide'99-2000-AC2-Darktide/dawnsong2003-2005,Lineage2-2005-2006 and now Darkfall-2009.....
In between WoW few months AoC few months and some f2p also all very short few weeks.
Thats true and a shame that most will go for walkthrough before doing almost anything in game these days.
Im prolly one few left who never search solutions on net to solve problems i do it all myself in solo games.
Unfortunate in mmo's when you wanne do a dungeon mostly people who first investigate walkthroughs and you can't almost escape this online:(
Ive try seek clans who will not cheat but its almost imposible.
Games played:AC1-Darktide'99-2000-AC2-Darktide/dawnsong2003-2005,Lineage2-2005-2006 and now Darkfall-2009.....
In between WoW few months AoC few months and some f2p also all very short few weeks.
I remember certain Runescape quests who sometimes required you to use your brain to figure out how to go further. And while ther were FAQ's i almost never used them apart from knowing what items i had to bring along to be able to complete it (i like puzzles but running back and in constantly because i needed a bucket or plank or rope is just annoying) and i loved them , still beats 99% of the quests MMO's currently offer. But i'm one of those few who think a quest taking up 4 hours of your time is actually epic .
The mentality nowadays just doesn't allow that anymore , it's all about the shiny loot and getting it asap. A whipe ?! RAGEQUIT. Long dungeon? Nerdwhine . etc...
But i think it could be profitable if the devs spent some time making a few of those challenging quests/instances. Purely to satsify the hardcore players. ( satisfying players = more mouth to mouth publicity = more consumers = $$$ )
Fere libenter homines id quod volunt credunt.
Among those who dislike oppression are many who like to oppress.
I don't like how you say that challenging stuff is for hardcore players. I wouldn't consider myself hardcore. I've been gaming for around 16 years, but I don't like to spend more than 2 - 3 hours of a day playing games. I just like what I do to be challenging rather than monotonous, simple, and easy. I think advanced content that requires you to think could very easily appeal to the gaming masses, but as it is now, they simply have no choice.
Also, I'm amused that aside from one guy, everyone else mentioned Turbine games. It's interesting to hear that they've stayed true to the excellent dungeon design of their first MMORPG.
When it comes to the use of hardcore i don't mean in a time-dimension. Just like when i say casual i don't mean people who only play 1 hour per week. I'm talking hardcore as a state of mind, people willing to put efforts into the game, whether it's time or thinking .
Fere libenter homines id quod volunt credunt.
Among those who dislike oppression are many who like to oppress.
Hardcore usually refers to people willing to put excessive amounts of time into a game.
I know and i often preventively clarify what i consider hardcore but forgot to do so this time.
Fere libenter homines id quod volunt credunt.
Among those who dislike oppression are many who like to oppress.
I've always thought it would be very cool/ground breaking to make a game where you have to sign an agreement that nothing in game could be talked about outside the game/posted outside the game. An NDA agreement perhaps that you must sign to play.
It would allow the game to keep the mystique of the world and force players to group socially ingame rather than turn to FAQs outside game.
I also think that puzzles and such being hard, and not being in game isn't so much that players don't like them but humanity is fickle. In our moment of fustration/weakness, if there is a FAQ there to ease our momentary suffering we'll use it. If it wasn't there we would not use, we would just deal with it and keep going in what ways we could. I think in the end that provides a more satisfying game to the players because you have to solve things on your own back rather than the work that others put in.
I, and many people that remember the old days of MMOs/golden ages etc always go back to the sense of exploration and wonder in our first MMO. The web made it too easy to expose all the secrets of every game, every new player could accumulate all the knowledge of anyone who had been playing up to that point, now... I think it has ruined the sense of wonderment in games, everything is known, nothing is mystical.. and at its heart exploration is about uncovering the unknown on your own, there should always be a sense of mysticism about the world, there should always be things that you don't know about, can't know about unless you've been there or done it yourself.
[edit] - Nothing is quite like exploring through some forest, and finding little groves or caves and stepping foot on cliffs and wondering if you were the first. Whether that soil had ever been set foot on. Maybe no one would ever set foot on it. That little wonderment about the game, and things like that are what made it fun in the beginning. Knowing things others did not, little secrets you had found out on your own.