This is a simple thread.
For well over 10 years now, we old school folks have been talking about how easy MMO's have become and lamenting that nobody is making a good difficult / challenging MMO...
SO... in your own words, define what difficult and/or challenging mean to you as those words relate to an MMO.
I'm thinking it might be interesting to see similarities / differences in what folks think.
Great thread topic. Everyone thinks about challenge in different ways.
- Class Design. EQ classes all played differently, some drastically different (think Bard). It took skill to get good because there was such a wide variety of what you could do with different classes.
-Loot. Loot in EQ was hard to come by which means sometimes you had to get by just on non-magical gear or wait quite a while between upgrades. This made the game more challenging and more rewarding when you finally got the loot!
- Scale. The game world was big and unless you were a Wizard or Druid, you were probably running. This made where you camp and bind a strategic move, not just for safety net.
-Progression. You leveled slowly in EQ which wasn’t a big deal to me because the game was extremely fun to play. Only those who are worried about getting to the top ASAP complained about “grinding”.
-Grouping. EQ required well balanced groups to optimally progress. It was tough getting good people in groups but felt really good when it finally happened.
Leveling: don't want to see people hit max level in the first week of release.
Good gear should be hard to come by and have a sense of accomplishment when received, whether by long detailed quest lines or by defeating difficult foes.
Classes should require some skill to master. Always loved a solid chanter when doing some difficult dungeon crawls in eq, but all chanters weren't equal.
Death should have consequences. I look back fondly on Fear corpse recovery. Hated it in the moment, but death and corpse recovery made EQ difficult and fun.
I figure it would be easier to define why modern MMOs are easier, then steer away from that:
1. Soloable content all the way to high end raiding. One class can do it all, promoting single minded mentality. This takes away from social environment and class uniquness. This also takes away from immersion because most people skip entire regions or zones because they level so fast.
2. Store bought or pay to win options. Mounts, Exp potions, gear sets, in-game tradeskill items, cosmetic sets, pets, etc... Do NOT like anything outside of the game or anything of reality being used inside game.
3. Rarity of quest / drop mobs: Every 5 minutes or less the mob you need spawns, get in line everyone, be here shortly mentality. In EQ, the in-game world was dynamic and "rare" actually meant rare. This created excited and a sense of accomplishment when you earned something.
4. Danger within a zone: Super easy running around wherever you want, when you want. Mobs will eventually aggro off you in a certain amount of distance. Let's rush to get there mentality promotion. EQ, you could not do this in zones around same level, excellent job creating sense of true danger. This caused your to experience practically the entire zone because you had to plan your way thru it with a group.
5. Fast travel: MMOs now always have a means to fast travel anywhere you want. It becomes a point and click environment instead of immersion, giving a sense of scale in the game world.
6. Mob tethering: MMOs now days usually have shared mob AI and no uniqueness to creatively "split" them or work against them. It is always just "bring them all" mentality without thought.
7. Class Dependency: MMOs now days do not require needing anyone else or any other classes unique buffs or abilities. So flat, you just run out there and spam your multi-mob abilities with no thought other than killing to rush through. Completely anti-social promotion and the only need for guild is high end raiding or tougher group content (which is usually limited)
8. No death penalty: First of all, easy to get back to where you were, no risk for taking any kind of chance at all... Secondly, takes away from any sense of danger at all.
These are just the main ones I think of...
All good points so far, so rather than reiterate what others have said, let me add:
A game is challenging when the mobs are eventually better than you no matter what. Wow makes you equal to the mobs at all levels. EQ made the mobs get better than you at each level, until eventually one non raid mob could actually wipe a group of six if you weren't careful.
I also want to echo and expand on the needing to learn your class. The EQ bard should be the standard for all classes imo. You had to have actual skill to play a bard. A warrior could eventually gear themselves well and as long as they knew how to push auto attack and taunt, they were already 90% there. I'm not trying to bash warriors, but it's pretty damn well known that a bad bard and a good bard were more about the player than a gear. You can't really say the same about an eq rogue, at least not to the same extent.
I'd love to see a game where all classes need to know more than how to turn on auto attack and push 1,2, and 3, or how to target the tank and push the heal button when they hit a certain %.
A general take on it, I'd say the depth of in-game systems.
Whether you're talking about the combat system, class system, crafting system, or (in Pantheon's case) environmental system, they have to be complex and deep enough to engage the player and keep them interested. (obvious I know) For example, I play a lot of board games and the most enjoyable ones, to me, are the ones that provide many different viable options to win and also force you to continually adapt to a changing game state while, at the same time, giving you the tools you need to do so. You have to figure out how to best use those tools to accomplish your goals or sometimes even change those goals because the situation itself changes. It's the players responsibility to learn the systems. Most of the time we learn by making mistakes, we need the freedom to do that. I think that describes EQ pretty well too come to think of it. :)
ugh its late, I dunno if any of this makes any sense. I might just have to delete it in the morning. :)
Malsirian said:A general take on it, I'd say the depth of in-game systems.
Whether you're talking about the combat system, class system, crafting system, or (in Pantheon's case) environmental system, they have to be complex and deep enough to engage the player and keep them interested. (obvious I know) For example, I play a lot of board games and the most enjoyable ones, to me, are the ones that provide many different viable options to win and also force you to continually adapt to a changing game state while, at the same time, giving you the tools you need to do so. You have to figure out how to best use those tools to accomplish your goals or sometimes even change those goals because the situation itself changes. It's the players responsibility to learn the systems. Most of the time we learn by making mistakes, we need the freedom to do that. I think that describes EQ pretty well too come to think of it. :)
ugh its late, I dunno if any of this makes any sense. I might just have to delete it in the morning. :)
Because, you're right. Difficulty is about depth in all realms. Whether people get your board game example or not, you have a valid point. Difficulty is about making the best of the skills you have and being flexible with those skills. Difficulty is not just being uber dps. It's not about being able to collect 100,000,000,000 poppy seeds to make that amazing potion. Difficulty is about more than rotation and staying out of the fire. Difficulty is about learning from our failures and rising above them. It's about adapting. It's about knowing your teammates abilities and weaknesses and knowing enough about your own class to compensate for them. And letting them compensate for you. It's about dying over and over again and loving it because you're learning. All these difficult things take skill and patience and cooperation. (Which sometimes makes them more difficult.) And in the end, all the difficulty is worth it. That makes a god game.
I'm hoping for a good game...
**Edit: I wrote: "That makes a god game."
Not even gonna change it. I'm hoping this is the god of games. :P
For me, it's easy, EQ had all the "hard" mechanics as previously discussed and other posters have mentioned, but the one element that may not directly affect challenge, but magnifies all other challenging aspects is time. EQ made you fear/respect everything because time is finite, and EQ was a major time investment. You feared death, you dreaded traveling through Kithicor, you respected the warrior that had their epic, you were amazed at the person that was in full Plane of Fear Raid gear, you wished you were level 50 and knew you would be one... day... etc. etc.
Much like anything, if you feel that you've invested yourself and time into accomplishing a challenging goal, it feels more rewarding. Vanilla EQ just mastered the ever dangling, yet masterable challenge - you just had to put in the time/effort/blood/sweat/tears. You need slow progression.
i would like to add that when i think difficult/challenging - i think need others to succeed. Whether it be creating a relationship with the person providing my required materials for my chosen profession/s because i can't get everything i need ALONE, or creating a friendship group with people i can RELY on to assist my adventure.
I don't want to be able to do it all or be a god among others gods simply treating npcs with disdain.
Depth of content: exploration, lore, crafting, guild involvement.
Being scared of content ... a dynamic world that will chew you up and spit you out
Having decisions matter - whether it be being forced to choose between skills, chosing to aid the farmer talking to you about his issues or simply ignoring him. Having your reputation mean something that actually impacts what you can/cannot do. Being forced to know what all those non dps skills that you have learnt actually do. And more importantly having an understanding of how to use them and where to use them and (please oh please) when not to use them!
I also strongly feel that difficulty comes from having to create your character at every step - chosing talents/stats at begining at level up - and having variation across classes. No cookie cutter builds, no "you must have these abilities and you must press 1,2,2,2,1,1,3,2 and you will win'.
I wanted to give folks a chance to start chiming in (and I'm really enjoying reading what folks are posting) before I put my list up. Here goes...
An MMO has to test me emotionally to be difficult / challenging
This is really a summation of all the things we always talk about in terms of how they make people feel.
Going just a little deeper into a dungeon than your group really should go makes you feel both excited and, perhaps, a little bit afraid because you might die there; Camping a mob for hours or even a 45 minute trek from one part of the world to another requires patience; Getting trained causes anger; etc...
These things, of course, always had a counter. Getting a rare drop every now and then when you went that "little bit deeper" into a dungeon. Your mob spawning after those hours of camping and having the drop you were camping. Meeting someone new at the entrance to the dungeon you just got trained in and forming a new friendship. These were all good feelings BECAUSE you endured the corresponding negative emontional experience.
In other words, you sometimes need to be in an emotional state of wanting to get up and walk away - but stay because you know that corresponding good feeling will be - in a word - amazing.
An MMO has to favor mental dexterity over finger dexterity to be difficult / challenging
Running around avoiding fires is fun and all, but if doing so is the sum total of what comprises the difficulty of the game - then the game isn't difficult. If that is what an MMO offers, then its difficulty amounts to learning the "dance" of each engagement. That becomes repetitive and boring.
For me, I would prefer needing to learn things like:
The mechanics and tendancies of each type of mob; The intricacies of an environment; The components of my tool kit that work better in this situation or that; How to deal with unforseen circumstances; How much I can push my class in a given group before I have to back off for the good of the group I'm in (in other words, mastering CONTROL of my class); etc...
I'm not trying to bash any other game here, but there have been times in some MMO's where I'm doing a raid event and watching TV while my fingers just sort of "do the right things" on their own because they have done them in that fight so many times that I no longer have to think about it at all. Just let my fingers dance.
The summation of the things I listed above (and more) is that you always have to pay attention to what is going on - and know what to do based upon what is happening at any given point in time... or fail, learn, and try again.
An MMO has to put you in a position to deal with both the good and bad side effects of being with other people to be difficult / challenging
It's easy here to see the "bad" side effects and point them out. Some idiot trained you. The noob raider in your guild wandered too close to the next pack of mobs and got adds that wiped you. (Isn't it interesting how we always called it being trained when someone outside your group did it to your group, but adds if your group did it to your group?). Some other idiot steals your spawn that you've been camping for 10 hours...
But that too is countered by good. There were people of varied skill levels in my guild in EQ. Group with some of them, in "Dungeon A" - and you can't get too much past the door. It's not a gear issue, it's a skill, game knowledge issue. Group with another set of them, and you are pushing to the very end of the dungeon taking on the hardest camp in that dungeon.
So other people need to be a limiter AND a catalyst for you to be able to do things within the game world for an MMO to be difficult / challenging.
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And that's my personal list!
This is a great topic and there are a lot of great reasons as to what makes an MMO difficult. I think, for me, that what separated Everquest from other games was a great risk vs. reward system. Although it was simple, it struck a fear into you that made you think twice about most things. Being able to lose hours to a death meant that the possiblity of dying was taken into consideration when doing anything. And knowing that your group was in for a tough fight but after that tough fight you could be rewarded with that peice of gear you've been waiting for made that potential death worth while. I know we've all lost plenty of levels, those of us that are EQ vets, but did you go back to that same spot that you died and try again? Yes. Yes you did. And did you die again? Yep. But knowing what was on the other side of that mob or that long run to a dungeon or good camp spot meant that it was worth the price you would pay if you died.
The other thing that made everquest hard in my opinion was that most things took a group to kill. In most groups, not all, there needed to be a good tank, a good healer, good dps, and some CC. With those things in place a well organized group could do very well. If your tank was crap you knew it because every time the healer healed him/her the mob would jump the healer. With dps they needed to know which mobs were CC'd and which mob the tank was on, then which mob was next to kill. The healer needed to know when to heal because if one was missed that could spell disaster for the whole group, especially if no sow was available. Having all the keys in place meant a group could go far and clear difficult camps.
I talk a lot about everquest because it is the MMO I played the longest. I played world of warcraft just short of 5 years and it was also difficult in the beginning but, in my opinion, nowhere near what I experienced in Everquest.
This was mostly me rambling and my daughter has woken up so I have no time to proof read. Forgive my mistakes =)
For me, the challenges I really enjoyed most were some of the grouping areas, very memorable during the OoW area of Everquest.
The zones Riftseekers Sanctum and Muramite Proving Grounds stand out to me for this example.
While possible, it was very challenging to move throughout these zones by yourself. Whether it were navigationally challenging, see invis mobs were around, lack of safe spots, or certain areas being trained. If you were headed to be a replacement for a group, it was a sense of accomplishment to get to your new group without needing to be dragged and rezzed. It was a challenege that made you want to dedicate yourself to the group for a length of time. And if your group wiped in these zones, that was a whole nother animal. You paid attention to the people and groups around you, you were respectful to them, because if your group wiped, you sometimes counted on them to get your group back up and running.
As for the groups themselves, well their makeup of classes and talent were very important.
You had to have a puller that could split mobs and maintain a good pace.
You had to have a decently skilled and geared tank, because the mobs hit so hard.
You had to have a class that could slow and crowd control, because the mobs hit so fast.
You had to have some solid DPS support, because the mobs had so many hitpoints.
You had to have a good healer, because the fights would last so long.
In a nutshell, I enjoy the challenge of good, lengthy, and tactically driven group make up and fighting. Killing mobs in 10 seconds isn't rewarding to me.
Compared to other games, even from the same era (DAoC, AO), what set EQ1 apart:
1) Lack of first aid. There was no super HP/mana regen for sitting down out of combat for 5 seconds, no first aid kits, no "carry a healer in your back pocket" mechanics. If you took dmg, you either got healed or you spent the next 15 minutes watching your health bar regen. You had to have a healer or be a class that could find ways to never get hit. What made necromancers such gods of soloing was their ability to self-heal, avoid taking dmg ever, the fastest mana regen in the game and of course, Feign Death. The DoT stack + fear/aggro kite was just the method of killing, but the survival/self-sufficiency tools were what made that class.
2) Mob HP/DPS scaling up faster than players. At level 5, you can kill a yellow con mob, and at level 50, a single yellow con mob will be a solid test for an entire group, if not impossible.
3) With #2, Exp also scales exponentially, so now you need more points to hit next level, and oh yeah, you fight mobs lower level relative to yours, so your "% of level per kill" continually goes down.
4) Death hurts...bad. I used to hate deleveling, but when I ponder it all these years later, it's absolutely awesome to keep the fear and excitement for even high end, bored, uber guild raiders. If you can lose exp and levels, you're never truly out of the exp grinding woods. You always needs rogues and necros to fetch bodies, you always need rezzers, but no matter how tough you think you are, you're just one death loop away from being slapped down hard.
5) Mobs take 30+ seconds per kill. It's what makes crowd control, target management and pulling so important, and it's why WoW turned every PUG into endless gripes at the tanks to go faster in every instance. When a mob can get focus fired down in 5-10 seconds, there's no need for CC or decent pulling skill. Just have everyone stay on main assist's target and go berzerk on DPS. EQ1's kill speeds didn't allow that, and with mobs getting exponentially harder every level, the unruly 3 pull was a real struggle to pull off, and a 4 pull was a guaranteed wipe. In current EQ1, even outdoor grouping requires CC....mobs hit so freaking hard that if you do not lock down adds, even a well geared WAR will be smoked inside of 10 seconds, with a CLR spam healing them.
6) Travel takes a long time. Not the case once PoK got added, but before that EQ1 travel took forever. The world felt huge, and that made it seem tougher.
7) FAILURE. Spell fizzles, spell bounces, you swing and miss and miss and miss, your 250 skill in smithing/tailoring/whatever is still no match for the RNG and the guaranteed 5% chance to fail a combine, you drown, you fall, etc. So many ways to fail in EQ1.
A difficult MMO is one where the complexity of the encounters require applying a lot of determination, skill, understanding and time to deal with a given task while accepting appropriate punishment for failure.
Leaving out or minimizing any one of these makes the MMO less challenging and less rewarding. And when I'm not challenged and the rewards are insubstantial I quickly lose interest and soon stop playing.
*Who remember the standard raid position? Warrior (shrunk), backed into a corner with rest of raid at max melee range behind the mob attacking until dead. How many different encounters, expansion after expansion, were beaten using that exact same strategy? Dozens upon dozens were. But those complex events? Ssra Emperor, Rathe Council, Corinav where multiple groups all had to separate functions to perform simultaneously for the group to succeed. Amazing and fun. Those were the ones that kept me playing.
**Who remembers sending in sacrificial people to see if the mob DeathTouched? Or going in with a default approach just to see if any special attacks or spells were used then regrouping to best decide how to deal with them?
***Who remember having to stack buffs in the correct order because you learned the mob would dispell buffs so you 'hid' your good buffs behind useless ones? Or needing an insta-cast right-click buff item to keep them protected? Or knowing that a certain emote would preclude a certain attack or spell so everyone had to react properly or the raid would wipe?
One of the reasons EQ was a challenge was the Devs didnt cave to a playerbase that would whine about how hard something was. They would just say its working as intended.... Some encounters would feel like you would never beat them, everyone worked for it.
All new MMO's are afraid of losing subs/members and give in way to easy or just design it so everyone is a winner.
I prefer EQ's approach you felt like you earned it, even when you lost you learned from it.
You couldnt beat a raid encounter in EQ til your raid force was strong enough, people had to help eachother get geared. When you would finally beat the encounter everyone in your guild felt it and shared in the joy.
Vandraad said:**Who remembers sending in sacrificial people to see if the mob DeathTouched? Or going in with a default approach just to see if any special attacks or spells were used then regrouping to best decide how to deal with them?
** - why guilds brought rangers on raids. =)
On the whole, I think Raidan summed it up rather well. Not only is the challenge the need to work with others, the difficulty of the encounter, and the need to think and play intelligently, but its also about time and investment. The more time you spend, the more invested you become. The more invested you become the more dedicated you are to the game, and dedicated players pay subs. Its one of the main reasons why EQ is still going strong today.
Good answers, for me it's pretty simple:
A difficult or challenging MMO is one that has a reasonable chance of failure in any aspect of it, with meaningful consiquences for failing. Without that there's no sense of accomplishement.
That can be applied to fighting, crafting, leading, raiding, so on.
MMORPG's have gotten much more challenging in terms of raiding, boss mechanics, and boss complexity. Lets not kid ourselves in this regard.
In terms of every other aspect, the exact opposite is true.
I'd like to continue on with the current raid difficulty while bringing back all the old school open world challenge.
For me, challenge comes from having to make decision based on the situation in front of me. Encounters should be somewhat unpredictable, saving that interrput for the right moment should matter. It's also about being aware of your surrondings. Required class synergy can also be a nice challenge. The sum of the group should be, if used properly, greater than the individuals.
I disagree that time is a challenging aspect. It's an important one, but it is not a challenging one. Camping a mob for 30hours straight is a chore. Not only is it not challenging, it's not fun at all. Waiting for your health to regen over 20min outside of combat is also boring. I'd rather be required to kill 10x as many mobs to level but kill them at a good pace than kill 1 and wait afk after (the grouping incentive should come from the encounter challenge and not ridiculous down-time of solo players).Progression can be slow, but don't design the game around 3+ hours game session commitments. There is no GAME challenge there, only RL challenge in time management and avoiding family aggro (and I'd rather not have to give up the game to see my wife and kids).
@Mekada
In my post I said time magnifies all others, not that time is challenging in and of itself. Without slow progression, downtime, grinds, strategy in combat, resource management, etc. you have a clone of every new MMO today.
And, you didn't have to wait for your health to regen for 20 minutes outside combat if you grouped in EQ. You did if you soloed as a warrior (good luck), which EQ wasn't designed for. In a group-centric game, you have to have designed downtime to promote groups and class interdependence or everyone would solo - almost everyone (including me) will take the path of least resistance. And, even in Pantheon Brad has already said that some classes will solo better (guessing Summoner) than others, so if you "had" to solo, I'd recommend testing which class soloes the best.
And, the developers have already discussed that Pantheon dungeons are being designed with the 2-3 hour play session in mind by using "safe spots." Dungeons will have safe spots where you can camp and pick-up where you left off the next day versus the 8+ hour family crushers that were EQ. So, if you're wanting to tackle dungeons in 30 minutes or so by running an instance - I don't think you've researched Pantheon's tenets and/or design enough. I'm sure there will be plenty of other tasks that could be completed such as crafting in 30 minutes, or if you picked a class that could solo "better" I'm sure you could kill a few mobs, but, as I've stated in other threads - it's your (the player's) expectations that have to change. If you only have one 2-3 play session every week or every 2 weeks, it will take you *much* longer to obtain max level. Doesn't mean it couldn't occur, it just means your expectations of having to be the best/first does.
I fall directly in line with your avoidance of family agro and having limited time; however, I wouldn't want to sacrifice others gameplay so the game could cater to my time commitments. My expectations have to change as well - and I'm highly competitive - so it's not easy.
Aldie said:MMORPG's have gotten much more challenging in terms of raiding, boss mechanics, and boss complexity. Lets not kid ourselves in this regard.
In terms of every other aspect, the exact opposite is true.
I'd like to continue on with the current raid difficulty while bringing back all the old school open world challenge.
This is pretty much it. Making challenging raids is easy. Keeping the rest of the game challenging is where developers fail.
However, it's not easy to just "make it challenging" either. For instance, one thing that made release-day EQ super challenging was the fact that your hit rate was probably like 20-30%. It was kind of artificial and didn't rely on the skill of the player to succeed. If you solo'd in the first 10 levels, you were just staring at a mob hoping that the RNG would favor you and your hit rate would be high enough to kill the mob before it killed you.
Modern EQ nailed the difficulty level of solo/group content in my opinion. Hit rate is no longer a concern, it's purely down to ability usage to be successful. Named group mobs can one-round a group geared tank unless you and your healer play exceptionally well. The problem EQ suffers from now, though, is an extremely small population and group content that is largely irrelevant outside of a few instances you have to run for a raid-necessary item.
Vanguard also did well with the group-level difficulty. PotA and KDQ could both be very punishing when they first came out, and still weren't completely trivial even once you overgeared the content. IF they could replicate Vanguard's group-level difficulty, I think Pantheon would be on the right track difficulty-wise.
Aldie said:MMORPG's have gotten much more challenging in terms of raiding, boss mechanics, and boss complexity. Lets not kid ourselves in this regard.
In terms of every other aspect, the exact opposite is true.
I'd like to continue on with the current raid difficulty while bringing back all the old school open world challenge.
I find boss fights have gotten more about being technically perfect than being challenging. There's very little wiggle room for things going bad and very few people willing to try and stick it out if it does go bad because it's easier to just wipe and reset the encounter. Using original EQ as a measure, you could have LOTS of things go wrong in a raid and people would step up and recover because the fear of failure, and as a result time lost, was very real. So while most current boss fights have gotten more complex the chances of failure have dropped to almost comical levels. "Wipe and reset" should never be a tactic that will almost always lead to victory.
I have no problem with more interesting mechanics and complexity - there just needs to be a stiffer penalty for failure, but chances for recovery. That's how memories, and heroes, are made.