what I don't like about many raids/encounters in many MMORPGs is the fact that they can be "learned"
Stand here, cast this, until this happens, then move here because that will trigger this, then this will happen so the people in the other class will do this while you do that.
That sort of thing does take coordination and it is difficult to make all the pieces fit in the right place, but I would rather it be more random, which might make them too difficult for most I guess.
^^ Totally agree here! ^^
What is so hard about finding info on the net and copying what has already been done by someone else? The hard part is learning what is what and when to do what you need to do. It seems to me that the biggest complainers about "ease of play" are the same ones who search and search for the optimal everything, then copy, paste, and get bored. What is the point of playing? I laugh at people in WoW who have actual programs that tell them what do to when. I find many of these same players lamenting how easy games are. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out the conundrum here.
Some randomness is exactly what MMOs lack. why not have a pool of powers for the MOBs to choose from and vary their usage of them? I think, as you pointed out, it would be too tough for those that have to get their games given to them on a silver platter. Since that covers the majority of players (I think) it won't happen anytime soon.
They did that in EQ, but then people got frustrated because encounters become a roll of the dice. 'If he doesn't use X, we will win'. So they changed raid mechanics from luck to skill. Yes skill is what brings a boss down. Skill is what makes a goal in soccer. It's about noticing things in the environment and reacting to them. It doesn't matter if its 'easy' or 'hard'. Some things just require a better trained eye, and so are not as easy for the masses to become skilled at. The add ons and stuff in wow bring down the skill factor a lot because these events become obvious.
Life is a skill-less time sink. Everything is easy. It's all subjective. Things are hard until you master them, and then they become easy and a 'time sink' e.g. they're boring now.
nethervoid - Est. '97 [UO|EQ|SB|SWG|PS|HZ|EVE|NWN|WoW|VG|DF|AQW|DN|SWTOR|Dofus|SotA|BDO|AO|NW|LA] - Currently Playing EQ1 20k+ subs YouTube Gaming channel
Time sinks are part of MMORPGS deal with it, leave the genre or go back to WoW you know a game without consequences.
I'd rather play a so called inconvient/time sink game, where people are held accountable for their actions and have to work together in order to accomplish things. If you screw up you should be punished, therefore you should be better prepared next time.
God I miss the days when all these crybabies realized their instant gratification formula isn't working in mmorpgs, they gave up and have never been seen again till McBlizzard came with the World of Fastfoodcraft...
MMORPGS need to be worlds instead of carebear games again.
We need a MMORPG Cataclysm asap, finish the dark age of MMORPGS now!
"Everything you're bitching about is wrong. People don't have the time to invest in corpse runs, impossible zones, or long winded quests. Sometimes, they just want to pop on and play." "Then maybe MMORPGs aren't for you."
Time sinks are part of MMORPGS deal with it, leave the genre or go back to WoW you know a game without consequences.
I'd rather play a so called inconvient/time sink game, where people are held accountable for their actions and have to work together in order to accomplish things. If you screw up you should be punished, therefore you should be better prepared next time.
God I miss the days when all these crybabies realized their instant gratification formula isn't working in mmorpgs, they gave up and have never been seen again till McBlizzard came with the World of Fastfoodcraft...
MMORPGS need to be worlds instead of carebear games again.
take away the Harsh Death Penalty, and you will realize this.
umadbrah?
The "harsh death penalty" I already explained in the first post. You either adapt or you die. Seeing as how you found it frustrating, you clearly did not adapt very well LOL
Time sinks are part of MMORPGS deal with it, leave the genre or go back to WoW you know a game without consequences.
I'd rather play a so called inconvient/time sink game, where people are held accountable for their actions and have to work together in order to accomplish things. If you screw up you should be punished, therefore you should be better prepared next time.
God I miss the days when all these crybabies realized their instant gratification formula isn't working in mmorpgs, they gave up and have never been seen again till McBlizzard came with the World of Fastfoodcraft...
MMORPGS need to be worlds instead of carebear games again.
Try reading the thread next time. Thanks.
Wasn't dedicated at you just how I feel general about the whole thing.
If people can't handle stuff like that, well instead of playing crybaby they should just move on.
We need a MMORPG Cataclysm asap, finish the dark age of MMORPGS now!
"Everything you're bitching about is wrong. People don't have the time to invest in corpse runs, impossible zones, or long winded quests. Sometimes, they just want to pop on and play." "Then maybe MMORPGs aren't for you."
While not an MMO, I think Super Meat Boy is the perfect example of Hard/Difficult game design. The tasks are short and extremely challenging, while at the same time the players don't feel punished for failing because of the quick iterations of gameplay.
The problem with MMOs is challenging content takes a hell of a lot longer to design than simple time sink mechanics so they tend to steer towards that.
While not an MMO, I think Super Meat Boy is the perfect example of Hard/Difficult game design. The tasks are short and extremely challenging, while at the same time the players don't feel punished for failing because of the quick iterations of gameplay.
The problem with MMOs is challenging content takes a hell of a lot longer to design than simple time sink mechanics so they tend to steer towards that.
Time sinks are part of MMORPGS deal with it, leave the genre or go back to WoW you know a game without consequences.
I'd rather play a so called inconvient/time sink game, where people are held accountable for their actions and have to work together in order to accomplish things. If you screw up you should be punished, therefore you should be better prepared next time.
God I miss the days when all these crybabies realized their instant gratification formula isn't working in mmorpgs, they gave up and have never been seen again till McBlizzard came with the World of Fastfoodcraft...
MMORPGS need to be worlds instead of carebear games again.
Try reading the thread next time. Thanks.
Wasn't dedicated at you just how I feel general about the whole thing.
If people can't handle stuff like that, well instead of playing crybaby they should just move on.
I think you need to realize WoW also has massive time sinks. Also this thread has nothing to do with bitching about time sinks, it has to do with people like you and others who think old school games like Final Fantasy XI, Ultima Online, Everquest 1, Mu Online and other garbage were "hard" because they had "severe death penalities" or some other garbage. Hard != time sinks or inconvience.
I'll be one of the many who thanks Blizzard for taking that crap out of the genre and trying to minimize it...though it's still pretty bad on WoW, at least it doesn't take me 15 minutes to get from Ironforge to Stormwind.
um name them please? Back when I stopped playing the game had lost all little depth it ever had to begin with, no time skins, no consequences and no challenge so.
Games back in the goldendays where just that much better, deeper and rewarding . It also happening in FPS games some call recovering health while ducking convience I call it bullshit. Same with the no death penalty or hand holding gameplay.
Take Super Mario 1 for example you played through it, till you beat it and now? After 8 deaths the AI is doing the level for you how stupid is that?! Thanks to Mclizzard MMORPGS are heading into the same way,.
I'd rather have time sink, inconvience and hard content instead of purely hard but full with convience cause thats != hard/difficult.
We need a MMORPG Cataclysm asap, finish the dark age of MMORPGS now!
"Everything you're bitching about is wrong. People don't have the time to invest in corpse runs, impossible zones, or long winded quests. Sometimes, they just want to pop on and play." "Then maybe MMORPGs aren't for you."
Does anyone besides me have no clue wtf this guy is talking about?
seem like he/she is talking about how gameplay added features that seem to make games now days more easier.
For example, that person used FPS's health recovery, which was made popular by Halo.
Before then, most FPS (including Halo 1) used Health Packs instead of regeneration.
I disagree that it made the game easier. Halo was still pretty hard. Also notice Halo has no death Penalty
Yeah I really have no clue what he was talking about. Though the whole health regen thing really did screw up some games *COUGH* DNF *COUGH*.
I don't get how he's equating difficulty with inconvinces though lol
StarCraft 2, even though it added convient features, is still micro, macro and positionally intensive.
Street Fighter IV, even though n00b friendly, is still damn hard despite the lack of parrying.
Then we've got BlazBlue, the dumbed down version of Guilty Gear...that still took me forever to get a 100% execution rate on Noel's BnBs (took me 2 months, roughly 1 hour each day of repeating her BnB before I pulled 100/100 tries of her BnBs).
Yeah...I don't get what he's saying, and hard MMOs still don't exist, today or yesterday.
An MMO game being harder doesnt interest me as much as an MMO being more community based. If it's too easy, thats not good .. but if it's too hard I find it less enjoyable in a community aspect.
This is a key problem with balancing an MMO. If it's too easy the hardcore guilds will quit because they will be done with content in 3 weeks. If it's too hard most guilds cant finish the content till its nerfed into the ground .. and nobody likes having to wait for that. Badges are a bandaid for this problem. A smelly festering bandaid. Wish there was a better solution.
Strangely enough, vanilla wow seemed fine in this respect. It never bothered me all that much that I didn't see Naxx 1.0 ... I was having fun and working my way through AQ when TBC hit and while I was a little dissapointed I didnt see Naxx .. it was onto bigger and better things.
Same with the BE zone raid. Killed the first 2 bosses and was a little dissapointed but again ... onto bigger and worse!! things .. oh wait .. yea thats right WotLK sucked.
For some reason it bothered me a lot more when there were hard modes and normal modes. Probably because normal modes were too easy. Plus by that time everyone realized that badges > community so the game really started to sour on me at that point as community went to the crapper.
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity. I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
I used the health recovery while ducking system as an example, cause it shows how "convience" can mean dumb down, easier gameplay.
If people think getting punished for screwing up big time is a time sink, well then maybe go back to all the FPS games? I never said MMORPGS where hard back in the golden days, but they were something new games aren't
virtual worlds
guess what? A virtual world is hard, ruff and nasty.
Take the stupid instances:
The only people who like them are those that want everything for nothing. I'd rather look for a camp and spend my time there instead of r unning the same instance over and over and over again. They aren't hard/convient they are braindead.
last example:
Idiot gamble so called dungeonfinder.
We need a MMORPG Cataclysm asap, finish the dark age of MMORPGS now!
"Everything you're bitching about is wrong. People don't have the time to invest in corpse runs, impossible zones, or long winded quests. Sometimes, they just want to pop on and play." "Then maybe MMORPGs aren't for you."
...which are MOBAs, and they are so different from the common MMO that a new classification of game has actually been created for them.
Enough said.
Well...
Starcraft 2 is an RTS, not a MOBA.
Lien's comment is wrong because a massive amount of players doesn't make a game an MMO. Otherwise we'd call Modern Warfare, Starcraft 2, League of Legend, (and others) MMOs -- and we don't because they clearly aren't. A persistent massive world is the real differentiator between MMO and non-MMO.
But Lien's underlying point is right that the skill requirement doesn't prevent these games from having massive playerbases. The only reason someone might think otherwise is because RPGs (and MMORPGs) by definition offload the skill requirement onto player progression (stats.)
The last point is why the majority of MMORPGs are easier than "hard" games mentioned in this thread, however it doesn't change the fact that the endgame of the better MMORPGs ends in content which is similarly difficulty compared to "hard" games.
And that transitions into my frequent critque of MMORPGs: that they don't give you the option to advance faster by tackling hard content earlier in progression. CoX did it, but nobody else seems to make it a focus.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
If people think getting punished for screwing up big time is a time sink, well then maybe go back to all the FPS games? I never said MMORPGS where hard back in the golden days, but they were something new games aren't
They were something new games aren't. They were also something old games weren't. That was part of their unpopularity: they weren't good games.
Many old MMORPGs are analogous to simulations (Flight Sim, Jane's simulators, etc) ; inherently niche because they sacrifice entertainment in the pursuit of simulation.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Since it was mentioned here, Battletoads was actually difficult due to poor controls and terrible design mechanics. The difficulty wasn't really genuine. Same goes with a lot of NES games that were deemed difficult such as Contra (wouldn't be nearly as difficult if you had a health bar and unlimited continues) and Friday the 13th (buggy mess + horrible design). Most of what the OP mentioned (and Ninja Gaiden) were genuinely difficult games though.
Mainstream MMOs won't get "hard" till we raise the skill cap OR thinking element beyond the standard hotkey formula. Until then, they are more reliant on time invested into the game and learning each individual classes and how to deal with them (also time investment, AKA grinding). It doesn't require a whole lot of brain power (EX: Catherine) or twitch skill/dexterity (EX: most FPS and Fighting games). Still you can find a few that are more reliant on skills than others, for instance there is a big difference between a skilled Puzzle Pirate player and one who simply just invested a lot of time into the game (the skilled player will always win, even with a newly created character). Same goes for Planetside players.
Lol - "wouldn't Contra be easy if they completely changed the entire mechanic?" Is basically what you just said. The game isn't poorly designed, it was one of the most popular titles of it's time. And Battletoads is widely noted as an incredibly hard game, due to the timing, reaction, and control mastery. But most of the old NES games were tough, partly due to the lack of "continues" (as you stated) when your actions actually had consequence and caused you to think things through. It's part of the mechanic of the difficulty. You seem like on of the those people who sucked at the games then said "It's because the controls are messed up!"
Does anyone besides me have no clue wtf this guy is talking about?
seem like he/she is talking about how gameplay added features that seem to make games now days more easier.
For example, that person used FPS's health recovery, which was made popular by Halo.
Before then, most FPS (including Halo 1) used Health Packs instead of regeneration.
I disagree that it made the game easier. Halo was still pretty hard. Also notice Halo has no death Penalty
Yeah I really have no clue what he was talking about. Though the whole health regen thing really did screw up some games *COUGH* DNF *COUGH*.
I don't get how he's equating difficulty with inconvinces though lol
StarCraft 2, even though it added convient features, is still micro, macro and positionally intensive.
Street Fighter IV, even though n00b friendly, is still damn hard despite the lack of parrying.
Then we've got BlazBlue, the dumbed down version of Guilty Gear...that still took me forever to get a 100% execution rate on Noel's BnBs (took me 2 months, roughly 1 hour each day of repeating her BnB before I pulled 100/100 tries of her BnBs).
Yeah...I don't get what he's saying, and hard MMOs still don't exist, today or yesterday.
Well, health regen doesn't really effect the difficulty of a game. The reason it sucked in DNF because it made the gameplay slower (you had to hide for cover) which is not what DNF "should" have been about. I don't really feel it had an effect on the difficulty of the game, it's still pretty hard on the highest difficulty.
BlazBlue isn't a dumbed down version of Guilty Gear. It has mechanics in it that require more execution timing (instant block), has some complex mechanics (the guard libra can be confusing to new players), and has similar mechanics to Guilty Gear (rapid cancel, barrier burst, etc.). Combo execution/timing is about the same as Guilty Gear (way more lenient than Street Fighter IV as there aren't really any of those single frame links), in fact I had an easier time pulling off Millia's advanced combos than Noel's. I don't know why you would call it a dumbed down version.
I actually don't consider SFIV noob friendly (combo execution is very hard due to many 1 frame links, FADC is difficult to learn, too many zoners that can shut down noobs). For a noob friendly fighter I would recommend someone play Soul Calibur.
A hard MMO.... I guess I would suggest Puzzle Pirates, since performance is based solely on how well you do in puzzles.
A lot of the reasons there aren't really any challenging MMO's can share the same reasons why a LOT of PnP DM's don't typically run games with more than 5-6 people.
When you have 20,30,50+ people in a situation, it's hard to really create unique compelling gameplay that keeps people engaged on an individual level. Hell, if you had 20 people in a single D&D game, you'd probably be looking at 1hr+ combat turns and god only knows how long and drawn out the non-combat would get..
Right now, MMO's are still "to big" for this kind of content. Thankfully though, smaller group content, co-op play, and more dynamic worlds are being made. Granted, it's not massive, but it wasn't to long ago that co-op games in general weren't big either.
Now as those begin to grow and mature, dev's will start figuring out new tricks which will in turn help push ideas forward into MMO tech.
Hell, I'd just be happy with a small scale, 16-player persistent world of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
Shooting that makes you learn each gun, plenty of stashes, bandits and bodies to scavenge out supplies, and AI that works in a team, so if you betray someones friend in a faction, his buddies come looking, and if they pin you into a corner, you can bet the one throwing the grenade is luring you out so his friend can snipe your exit.
Only shame with that is the games real gameplay is SP only, with just walled-off TDM/CS-style MP..
Lets Push Things Forward
I knew I would live to design games at age 7, issue 5 of Nintendo Power.
Support games with subs when you believe in their potential, even in spite of their flaws.
Since it was mentioned here, Battletoads was actually difficult due to poor controls and terrible design mechanics. The difficulty wasn't really genuine. Same goes with a lot of NES games that were deemed difficult such as Contra (wouldn't be nearly as difficult if you had a health bar and unlimited continues) and Friday the 13th (buggy mess + horrible design). Most of what the OP mentioned (and Ninja Gaiden) were genuinely difficult games though.
Mainstream MMOs won't get "hard" till we raise the skill cap OR thinking element beyond the standard hotkey formula. Until then, they are more reliant on time invested into the game and learning each individual classes and how to deal with them (also time investment, AKA grinding). It doesn't require a whole lot of brain power (EX: Catherine) or twitch skill/dexterity (EX: most FPS and Fighting games). Still you can find a few that are more reliant on skills than others, for instance there is a big difference between a skilled Puzzle Pirate player and one who simply just invested a lot of time into the game (the skilled player will always win, even with a newly created character). Same goes for Planetside players.
Lol - "wouldn't Contra be easy if they completely changed the entire mechanic?" Is basically what you just said. The game isn't poorly designed, it was one of the most popular titles of it's time. And Battletoads is widely noted as an incredibly hard game, due to the timing, reaction, and control mastery. But most of the old NES games were tough, partly due to the lack of "continues" (as you stated) when your actions actually had consequence and caused you to think things through. It's part of the mechanic of the difficulty. You seem like on of the those people who sucked at the games then said "It's because the controls are messed up!"
Contra was one of the first truely difficult games I finished (and yes, without the Konami code). It took several months to get it down. Let's avoid the adhominem attacks please. It wasn't difficult because it required excellent timing and reactions, it was difficult because if you ran out of continues you restart from the beginning, which is a horrible mechanic. NES games were difficult because they had poor controls and poor design mechanics which forced you to restart from the beginning of the game everytime you died. Controls in Contra were fine. That doesn't make the games themselves poor, but overall if a game like that was released today it wouldn't exactly be well accepted. There are plenty of games that are hard and don't force you to restart from the beginning. Battletoads, particularly the jumping level when you are are on motorbike/jetski (or whatever it was) was pretty much about memorizing the level and timing by repetition, it's basically the same thing as grinding in a MMO.
Instanced Raid content in new mmorpg's is frequently harder or of similar difficulity than in older games. There are some exceptions but I mean generally.
What is MUCH easier in new mmorpg's is OPEN WORLD content. In games like Lotro or WoW you can get to max level and don't die once if you're bit careful.
Good luck with doing that in f.e. in EQ.
New mmorpg's are like divided into "difficulty zones" - 1) open world - incredibly easy 2) normal instances - normal difficulty 3) raids - normat up to very hard
While older games content difficulty was more evenly divided through whole game.
So in new mmorpg's if you don't raid game might get way too easy very quickly ,while in older games challenging encounters might found you everywhere.
The main reason why the original Ninja Gaiden was hard is that the controls didn't entirely work properly. The game demanded that you make very precise movements, but the controls were too sloppy to allow said precise movements. That's hard, but it's not an interesting sort of hard.
"MegaMan X/MegaMan/MegaMan Zero/Rockman Series
Yeah....if you don't know why this is hard lol"
I once spent a weekend reverse-engineering the password system to Mega Man X. I still have the spreadsheet for it. You pick which bosses you want beaten and which items you want, and it gives you eight passwords that will have that precise combination. I never thought of the Mega Man games as being especially hard, though.
Some of the early Atari games really had no notion of play balance. There was trivial and there was impossible, but there wasn't a lot of in-between. Sometimes a game would have adjustable difficulty, so you could pick between trivial and impossible, but still no in-between.
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The real problem is that most MMORPGs don't have a coherent notion of difficulty. To take WoW as an example, killing a level 40 mob is basically impossible to solo if you're level 10. It's completely trivial if you're level 60. Is that an easy mob or a hard mob? The question doesn't make sense.
You can try to say, is this an easy mob or a hard mob, if you're in this group, with this level, and this gear? But that seems kind of artificial, and if you have a full group of max level players with the best gear available, then nearly all content is easy in most MMORPGs. That's just a result of having success so heavily based on your level and gear, rather than on what you do with it.
The real problem is that most MMORPGs don't have a coherent notion of difficulty. To take WoW as an example, killing a level 40 mob is basically impossible to solo if you're level 10. It's completely trivial if you're level 60. Is that an easy mob or a hard mob? The question doesn't make sense.
You can try to say, is this an easy mob or a hard mob, if you're in this group, with this level, and this gear? But that seems kind of artificial, and if you have a full group of max level players with the best gear available, then nearly all content is easy in most MMORPGs. That's just a result of having success so heavily based on your level and gear, rather than on what you do with it.
It is quite simple actually. Normal (not elite , named ,etc) mobs for example level 40 should be checked against level 40 player equipped with medicore gear (for example few quest pieces , few crafted pieces and 1-2 instance drops).
If it feels easy and non-problematic to kill that mob considering you more or less know how to use your class then this mob is easy , too easy. Nowadays it is usually no problem to take 2-5 (depending on class)normal mobs that are on same level as you and kill them without even breaking a sweat. if you're equipped very good and/or very good at playing you can take much more mobs. In some games as much as 10+ which is ridiculous tbh.
On level based systems comparing content vs player that is not on level of judged content (like you said lvl 40 mob vs lvl 10 player , or lvl 40 mob vs . lvl 60 player) is pointless and just wrong.
But Lien's underlying point is right that the skill requirement doesn't prevent these games from having massive playerbases.
I missed where anyone was taking the stance of "people don't play games because they require skill."
Maybe it will be clearer if I presented a view from the other side. What if your chance of winning an SC2 or Counterstrike match was determined by how much time you invested in playing, NOT by how much you actually learned during that time, which varies from person to person, but simply by how long you have been going through the motions of the game.
This is why AC-DT and pre-AoS UO have combat that is unpopular for an MMO. This is why the Puzzle Pirates advancement system or an ELO advancement system would be unacceptable to most MMO gamers. You cannot ascend beyond your position without actually improving how you play. Even then, each person has their own ceiling where they will not rise beyond.
“We need a higher skill cap in MMOs to reward players that can handle it and not necessarily punish the handicapped.” -Lienhart
I think the divide is in the definition of MMO, so if he wants to include LoL, SC2 and GW into the category I am fine with that and agree not only that should higher player skill allow players to rise above but that such games, as he cited, exist already.
Now, if his issue is with player skill not being in MMORPG’s, that’s where we have our differences as I cited above and in prev posts.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Comments
They did that in EQ, but then people got frustrated because encounters become a roll of the dice. 'If he doesn't use X, we will win'. So they changed raid mechanics from luck to skill. Yes skill is what brings a boss down. Skill is what makes a goal in soccer. It's about noticing things in the environment and reacting to them. It doesn't matter if its 'easy' or 'hard'. Some things just require a better trained eye, and so are not as easy for the masses to become skilled at. The add ons and stuff in wow bring down the skill factor a lot because these events become obvious.
Life is a skill-less time sink. Everything is easy. It's all subjective. Things are hard until you master them, and then they become easy and a 'time sink' e.g. they're boring now.
nethervoid - Est. '97
[UO|EQ|SB|SWG|PS|HZ|EVE|NWN|WoW|VG|DF|AQW|DN|SWTOR|Dofus|SotA|BDO|AO|NW|LA] - Currently Playing EQ1
20k+ subs YouTube Gaming channel
DEMON SOUL WAS NOT HARD!!!!
IT WAS JUST FRUSTRATING
the gameplay is EASY.
take away the Harsh Death Penalty, and you will realize this.
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
Great another one of these crappy threads.
Time sinks are part of MMORPGS deal with it, leave the genre or go back to WoW you know a game without consequences.
I'd rather play a so called inconvient/time sink game, where people are held accountable for their actions and have to work together in order to accomplish things. If you screw up you should be punished, therefore you should be better prepared next time.
God I miss the days when all these crybabies realized their instant gratification formula isn't working in mmorpgs, they gave up and have never been seen again till McBlizzard came with the World of Fastfoodcraft...
MMORPGS need to be worlds instead of carebear games again.
We need a MMORPG Cataclysm asap, finish the dark age of MMORPGS now!
"Everything you're bitching about is wrong. People don't have the time to invest in corpse runs, impossible zones, or long winded quests. Sometimes, they just want to pop on and play."
"Then maybe MMORPGs aren't for you."
Try reading the thread next time. Thanks.
umadbrah?
The "harsh death penalty" I already explained in the first post. You either adapt or you die. Seeing as how you found it frustrating, you clearly did not adapt very well LOL
Wasn't dedicated at you just how I feel general about the whole thing.
If people can't handle stuff like that, well instead of playing crybaby they should just move on.
We need a MMORPG Cataclysm asap, finish the dark age of MMORPGS now!
"Everything you're bitching about is wrong. People don't have the time to invest in corpse runs, impossible zones, or long winded quests. Sometimes, they just want to pop on and play."
"Then maybe MMORPGs aren't for you."
While not an MMO, I think Super Meat Boy is the perfect example of Hard/Difficult game design. The tasks are short and extremely challenging, while at the same time the players don't feel punished for failing because of the quick iterations of gameplay.
The problem with MMOs is challenging content takes a hell of a lot longer to design than simple time sink mechanics so they tend to steer towards that.
I forgot about SMB, thanks for reminding me lol
I think you need to realize WoW also has massive time sinks. Also this thread has nothing to do with bitching about time sinks, it has to do with people like you and others who think old school games like Final Fantasy XI, Ultima Online, Everquest 1, Mu Online and other garbage were "hard" because they had "severe death penalities" or some other garbage. Hard != time sinks or inconvience.
I'll be one of the many who thanks Blizzard for taking that crap out of the genre and trying to minimize it...though it's still pretty bad on WoW, at least it doesn't take me 15 minutes to get from Ironforge to Stormwind.
um name them please? Back when I stopped playing the game had lost all little depth it ever had to begin with, no time skins, no consequences and no challenge so.
Games back in the goldendays where just that much better, deeper and rewarding . It also happening in FPS games some call recovering health while ducking convience I call it bullshit. Same with the no death penalty or hand holding gameplay.
Take Super Mario 1 for example you played through it, till you beat it and now? After 8 deaths the AI is doing the level for you how stupid is that?! Thanks to Mclizzard MMORPGS are heading into the same way,.
I'd rather have time sink, inconvience and hard content instead of purely hard but full with convience cause thats != hard/difficult.
We need a MMORPG Cataclysm asap, finish the dark age of MMORPGS now!
"Everything you're bitching about is wrong. People don't have the time to invest in corpse runs, impossible zones, or long winded quests. Sometimes, they just want to pop on and play."
"Then maybe MMORPGs aren't for you."
^
Does anyone besides me have no clue wtf this guy is talking about?
seem like he/she is talking about how gameplay added features that seem to make games now days more easier.
For example, that person used FPS's health recovery, which was made popular by Halo.
Before then, most FPS (including Halo 1) used Health Packs instead of regeneration.
I disagree that it made the game easier. Halo was still pretty hard. Also notice Halo has no death Penalty
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
Yeah I really have no clue what he was talking about. Though the whole health regen thing really did screw up some games *COUGH* DNF *COUGH*.
I don't get how he's equating difficulty with inconvinces though lol
StarCraft 2, even though it added convient features, is still micro, macro and positionally intensive.
Street Fighter IV, even though n00b friendly, is still damn hard despite the lack of parrying.
Then we've got BlazBlue, the dumbed down version of Guilty Gear...that still took me forever to get a 100% execution rate on Noel's BnBs (took me 2 months, roughly 1 hour each day of repeating her BnB before I pulled 100/100 tries of her BnBs).
Yeah...I don't get what he's saying, and hard MMOs still don't exist, today or yesterday.
An MMO game being harder doesnt interest me as much as an MMO being more community based. If it's too easy, thats not good .. but if it's too hard I find it less enjoyable in a community aspect.
This is a key problem with balancing an MMO. If it's too easy the hardcore guilds will quit because they will be done with content in 3 weeks. If it's too hard most guilds cant finish the content till its nerfed into the ground .. and nobody likes having to wait for that. Badges are a bandaid for this problem. A smelly festering bandaid. Wish there was a better solution.
Strangely enough, vanilla wow seemed fine in this respect. It never bothered me all that much that I didn't see Naxx 1.0 ... I was having fun and working my way through AQ when TBC hit and while I was a little dissapointed I didnt see Naxx .. it was onto bigger and better things.
Same with the BE zone raid. Killed the first 2 bosses and was a little dissapointed but again ... onto bigger and worse!! things .. oh wait .. yea thats right WotLK sucked.
For some reason it bothered me a lot more when there were hard modes and normal modes. Probably because normal modes were too easy. Plus by that time everyone realized that badges > community so the game really started to sour on me at that point as community went to the crapper.
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity.
I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
Whats so hard to understand?
I used the health recovery while ducking system as an example, cause it shows how "convience" can mean dumb down, easier gameplay.
If people think getting punished for screwing up big time is a time sink, well then maybe go back to all the FPS games? I never said MMORPGS where hard back in the golden days, but they were something new games aren't
virtual worlds
guess what? A virtual world is hard, ruff and nasty.
Take the stupid instances:
The only people who like them are those that want everything for nothing. I'd rather look for a camp and spend my time there instead of r unning the same instance over and over and over again. They aren't hard/convient they are braindead.
last example:
Idiot gamble so called dungeonfinder.
We need a MMORPG Cataclysm asap, finish the dark age of MMORPGS now!
"Everything you're bitching about is wrong. People don't have the time to invest in corpse runs, impossible zones, or long winded quests. Sometimes, they just want to pop on and play."
"Then maybe MMORPGs aren't for you."
Well...
Starcraft 2 is an RTS, not a MOBA.
Lien's comment is wrong because a massive amount of players doesn't make a game an MMO. Otherwise we'd call Modern Warfare, Starcraft 2, League of Legend, (and others) MMOs -- and we don't because they clearly aren't. A persistent massive world is the real differentiator between MMO and non-MMO.
But Lien's underlying point is right that the skill requirement doesn't prevent these games from having massive playerbases. The only reason someone might think otherwise is because RPGs (and MMORPGs) by definition offload the skill requirement onto player progression (stats.)
The last point is why the majority of MMORPGs are easier than "hard" games mentioned in this thread, however it doesn't change the fact that the endgame of the better MMORPGs ends in content which is similarly difficulty compared to "hard" games.
And that transitions into my frequent critque of MMORPGs: that they don't give you the option to advance faster by tackling hard content earlier in progression. CoX did it, but nobody else seems to make it a focus.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
They were something new games aren't. They were also something old games weren't. That was part of their unpopularity: they weren't good games.
Many old MMORPGs are analogous to simulations (Flight Sim, Jane's simulators, etc) ; inherently niche because they sacrifice entertainment in the pursuit of simulation.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Lol - "wouldn't Contra be easy if they completely changed the entire mechanic?" Is basically what you just said. The game isn't poorly designed, it was one of the most popular titles of it's time. And Battletoads is widely noted as an incredibly hard game, due to the timing, reaction, and control mastery. But most of the old NES games were tough, partly due to the lack of "continues" (as you stated) when your actions actually had consequence and caused you to think things through. It's part of the mechanic of the difficulty. You seem like on of the those people who sucked at the games then said "It's because the controls are messed up!"
Well, health regen doesn't really effect the difficulty of a game. The reason it sucked in DNF because it made the gameplay slower (you had to hide for cover) which is not what DNF "should" have been about. I don't really feel it had an effect on the difficulty of the game, it's still pretty hard on the highest difficulty.
BlazBlue isn't a dumbed down version of Guilty Gear. It has mechanics in it that require more execution timing (instant block), has some complex mechanics (the guard libra can be confusing to new players), and has similar mechanics to Guilty Gear (rapid cancel, barrier burst, etc.). Combo execution/timing is about the same as Guilty Gear (way more lenient than Street Fighter IV as there aren't really any of those single frame links), in fact I had an easier time pulling off Millia's advanced combos than Noel's. I don't know why you would call it a dumbed down version.
I actually don't consider SFIV noob friendly (combo execution is very hard due to many 1 frame links, FADC is difficult to learn, too many zoners that can shut down noobs). For a noob friendly fighter I would recommend someone play Soul Calibur.
A hard MMO.... I guess I would suggest Puzzle Pirates, since performance is based solely on how well you do in puzzles.
A lot of the reasons there aren't really any challenging MMO's can share the same reasons why a LOT of PnP DM's don't typically run games with more than 5-6 people.
When you have 20,30,50+ people in a situation, it's hard to really create unique compelling gameplay that keeps people engaged on an individual level. Hell, if you had 20 people in a single D&D game, you'd probably be looking at 1hr+ combat turns and god only knows how long and drawn out the non-combat would get..
Right now, MMO's are still "to big" for this kind of content. Thankfully though, smaller group content, co-op play, and more dynamic worlds are being made. Granted, it's not massive, but it wasn't to long ago that co-op games in general weren't big either.
Now as those begin to grow and mature, dev's will start figuring out new tricks which will in turn help push ideas forward into MMO tech.
Hell, I'd just be happy with a small scale, 16-player persistent world of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
Shooting that makes you learn each gun, plenty of stashes, bandits and bodies to scavenge out supplies, and AI that works in a team, so if you betray someones friend in a faction, his buddies come looking, and if they pin you into a corner, you can bet the one throwing the grenade is luring you out so his friend can snipe your exit.
Only shame with that is the games real gameplay is SP only, with just walled-off TDM/CS-style MP..
Lets Push Things Forward
I knew I would live to design games at age 7, issue 5 of Nintendo Power.
Support games with subs when you believe in their potential, even in spite of their flaws.
Contra was one of the first truely difficult games I finished (and yes, without the Konami code). It took several months to get it down. Let's avoid the adhominem attacks please. It wasn't difficult because it required excellent timing and reactions, it was difficult because if you ran out of continues you restart from the beginning, which is a horrible mechanic. NES games were difficult because they had poor controls and poor design mechanics which forced you to restart from the beginning of the game everytime you died. Controls in Contra were fine. That doesn't make the games themselves poor, but overall if a game like that was released today it wouldn't exactly be well accepted. There are plenty of games that are hard and don't force you to restart from the beginning. Battletoads, particularly the jumping level when you are are on motorbike/jetski (or whatever it was) was pretty much about memorizing the level and timing by repetition, it's basically the same thing as grinding in a MMO.
Instanced Raid content in new mmorpg's is frequently harder or of similar difficulity than in older games. There are some exceptions but I mean generally.
What is MUCH easier in new mmorpg's is OPEN WORLD content. In games like Lotro or WoW you can get to max level and don't die once if you're bit careful.
Good luck with doing that in f.e. in EQ.
New mmorpg's are like divided into "difficulty zones" - 1) open world - incredibly easy 2) normal instances - normal difficulty 3) raids - normat up to very hard
While older games content difficulty was more evenly divided through whole game.
So in new mmorpg's if you don't raid game might get way too easy very quickly ,while in older games challenging encounters might found you everywhere.
The main reason why the original Ninja Gaiden was hard is that the controls didn't entirely work properly. The game demanded that you make very precise movements, but the controls were too sloppy to allow said precise movements. That's hard, but it's not an interesting sort of hard.
"MegaMan X/MegaMan/MegaMan Zero/Rockman Series
Yeah....if you don't know why this is hard lol"
I once spent a weekend reverse-engineering the password system to Mega Man X. I still have the spreadsheet for it. You pick which bosses you want beaten and which items you want, and it gives you eight passwords that will have that precise combination. I never thought of the Mega Man games as being especially hard, though.
Some of the early Atari games really had no notion of play balance. There was trivial and there was impossible, but there wasn't a lot of in-between. Sometimes a game would have adjustable difficulty, so you could pick between trivial and impossible, but still no in-between.
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The real problem is that most MMORPGs don't have a coherent notion of difficulty. To take WoW as an example, killing a level 40 mob is basically impossible to solo if you're level 10. It's completely trivial if you're level 60. Is that an easy mob or a hard mob? The question doesn't make sense.
You can try to say, is this an easy mob or a hard mob, if you're in this group, with this level, and this gear? But that seems kind of artificial, and if you have a full group of max level players with the best gear available, then nearly all content is easy in most MMORPGs. That's just a result of having success so heavily based on your level and gear, rather than on what you do with it.
It is quite simple actually. Normal (not elite , named ,etc) mobs for example level 40 should be checked against level 40 player equipped with medicore gear (for example few quest pieces , few crafted pieces and 1-2 instance drops).
If it feels easy and non-problematic to kill that mob considering you more or less know how to use your class then this mob is easy , too easy. Nowadays it is usually no problem to take 2-5 (depending on class)normal mobs that are on same level as you and kill them without even breaking a sweat. if you're equipped very good and/or very good at playing you can take much more mobs. In some games as much as 10+ which is ridiculous tbh.
On level based systems comparing content vs player that is not on level of judged content (like you said lvl 40 mob vs lvl 10 player , or lvl 40 mob vs . lvl 60 player) is pointless and just wrong.
I missed where anyone was taking the stance of "people don't play games because they require skill."
Maybe it will be clearer if I presented a view from the other side. What if your chance of winning an SC2 or Counterstrike match was determined by how much time you invested in playing, NOT by how much you actually learned during that time, which varies from person to person, but simply by how long you have been going through the motions of the game.
This is why AC-DT and pre-AoS UO have combat that is unpopular for an MMO. This is why the Puzzle Pirates advancement system or an ELO advancement system would be unacceptable to most MMO gamers. You cannot ascend beyond your position without actually improving how you play. Even then, each person has their own ceiling where they will not rise beyond.
“We need a higher skill cap in MMOs to reward players that can handle it and not necessarily punish the handicapped.” -Lienhart
I think the divide is in the definition of MMO, so if he wants to include LoL, SC2 and GW into the category I am fine with that and agree not only that should higher player skill allow players to rise above but that such games, as he cited, exist already.
Now, if his issue is with player skill not being in MMORPG’s, that’s where we have our differences as I cited above and in prev posts.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre