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Fun Level and Difficulty Level
Amathe
Member LegendaryPosts: 7,630
Suppose I told you there is a really, really fun mmorpg. The catch is, it's easy.
Did that just kill it for you?
Does an mmorpg need a certain amount of depth and challenge before most people can enjoy it?
Speaking just for myself, I don't want to have to be Stephen Hawking to succeed in a game, but I don't want to play Patty Cake Online either.
I guess like most folks I would have to try it. But as a general rule I need it not to be "too" easy.
Did that just kill it for you?
Does an mmorpg need a certain amount of depth and challenge before most people can enjoy it?
Speaking just for myself, I don't want to have to be Stephen Hawking to succeed in a game, but I don't want to play Patty Cake Online either.
I guess like most folks I would have to try it. But as a general rule I need it not to be "too" easy.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
Comments
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
A great MMORPG needs variety of players. That includes people who want to play in an easy mode just to relax.
"Levels of depth and complexity" is a great way to put it.
And as someone who wants an extreme to that end, while I want unique reward, I don't want more powerful reward. That's just bad game design and drives a divisive spike between those diverse players.
Once upon a time....
I mean getting a T3 boat in BDO isn't difficult -- it is tedious -- you have to do the same thing over and over and over and over again.
Sometimes I play with just half of my attention while watching sports on TV. I don't want any kind of group or PvP game play during those times. I just want to chill with some easy grinding or crafting with frequent AFKs when I do that.
At other times I'll fully commit and do some dungeon runs, raids or PvP in groups and some other times, especially after I've tweaked my build, I'll seek out the hardest solo challenge I can find to get a feel for my "new and improved" build.
I like games that give me all of those possibilities.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
In UO I sometimes just hit a place for gathering supplies in simple hack and slash mode. I could Hide and take a short break as needed. That was on Trammel (non-PvP, which brings up another problem for pure PvP games).
At other times I really enjoyed that other extreme, pushing solo play to the limit.
My guild was an anti-PKer guild. But we all enjoyed PvP battles and set up some great battles with other guilds. Those were intense and I have some very fond memories due to unusual and memorable strategies involved.
As far as great "Dungeoneering" in groups, there were many times like that too.
And my love for exploring mystery was somewhat satisfied too, even though much of that turned out to be just broken. But I did find some "things" that very, very few others ever knew about. Most likely broken code involved in things that were supposed to mean something, but you never know.
I never figured out the mystery of why a circle of pillars, deep in the southern jungles, would be there sometimes and not others. I just couldn't find a cause. But I never got around to timing it out, it might have had to do with the moon phases (related to the Moon Gates).
Ahh, I love mysteries.
Once upon a time....
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Did anyone ever figure out those weird kids (just after Goldshire, I think) that used to walk with their teacher along the roads?
I figured out how to get and tame the Ghost Sabercat in that one large ruins area, I forget where that was. I didn't play WoW all the way through, only got to level 45 with a Druid. It's a great game, but not really what I want.
Once upon a time....
There are people who think Dark Souls is fun precisely because of the challenge. There are people who think Riven is fun because of the difficulty of hte puzzles.
there are people who think other games are fun because there are no difficult challenges and they can lose themselves in the world and the lore without having to stress over "getting/figuring out/defeating" something.
I find Dark Souls difficulty frustrating but intriguing and I definitely get a sense of accomplishment if I finally beat something.
There are a few people on this site who insist Dark Souls isn't difficult. I don't think they get what "difficult" means just because they think it isn't and a great many people do.
I remember playing Morrowind for the first time and kept having to up the difficulty. I eventually realized that "difficulty" was just hampering the player while making the npc's do the same or more damage. But it wasn't applying better ai or better strategy.
I much prefer the latter than the former/just making the character do less damage. Otherwise I might as well not use armor or upgrade my weapons.
I suppose I prefer "medium" difficulty for most things these days as story/world/setting is a bit more interesting and compelling to me than being able to kill that boss after 20 tries.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
1) I should have a legitimate shot at beating something the first time, without needing magic knowledge that comes only from failure or looking it up.
2) It should be hard enough that I'll fail a significant fraction of the time when new to some piece of content.
3) Failures should always have been avoidable if I had played better, rather than purely bad luck that it was impossible to do anything about.
4) It should be both possible and useful to learn and adjust my approach to be more successful.
5) Once I figure out how to do something and get some practice on that particular thing, it should be easy enough that I'll succeed nearly all of the time. The game should then let me move on to a different challenge and not have to demonstrate that I can beat the same thing a bunch of times in a row.
6) It should never be hard enough that I get completely stuck and cannot move on.
The problem is that balancing difficulty like that is hard to do. Even if a game gets it right for me personally, that might not satisfy the same criteria for another person.
Because it's hard to balance stuff well for different people of different skill levels, a lot of game developers seem to focus on (6): make sure that it's easy enough that no one gets stuck. And they often do that by making everything really easy for everyone, which leads to boring games.
I don't take slutty pictures while holding a controller
No I definitely need challenge.
Someone else telling me a game is FUN does not do a single thing for me,i have to judge it for myself.So according to the parameters of this topic,the game would only be fun to YOU because YOU are judging it and nobody else is weighing in.
I guess we can look at the most obvious genre that fits this topic.....ARPG's.
Super brain dead easy and to me NOT fun what so ever and if i would rate the genre on a whole i would give it a 1/10 for such a lazy cheap game design.We or i could say 95+% is in your gem slots/build and a maximum of about 5% is about you the player but i always felt the player was meaningless,any dummy could grab an elite build and steamroll the game.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
But you more or less described most online RPG games. Most of the time spent are doing mindless grinding. And the only hard part about grinding is doing things efficiently. Trying to get to your goal with as little time as possible.
http://www.mmoblogg.wordpress.com
It's like when Peter on the family guy bought a crossword puzzle book with the puzzles already done... because it frees him up to do other stuff.
Eso is a good example of this. Vet original dungeons are a moderate challenge for most players and there is great uptake on players doing this content.
the dlc vet dungeons they introduced ramped up the difficulty factor with heavy mechanics and oneshots and there's not great uptake on the content.
the moderate challenge always wins out. Most players will not adapt. They will avoid instead if its too much trouble.
For instance, I personally found Grim Dawn to not be particularly challenging. If you put together a great build then dying is almost a foreign concept, but it was still hella fun to run around in the game world obliterating mobs of bad guys.
On the other hand, I've been playing a lot, LOT, of Magic Arena recently and it's essentially 4D chess with some randomization and variance. You need to know the game pieces very well and you need to anticipate your opponents turn and think 3-4 turns ahead yourself.
Another way to answer your question is to look at one of the really popular games of the past few years: Stardew Valley.
It's an easy, stress free farming game that isn't particularly difficult and managed to place in Steam's top selling games of 2017... although towards the end of the list.
I think that the vast majority of people, however, just want something in between. Enough of a challenge to feel like they accomplished something, but not bad that they spend a lot of time staring at a respawn screen.