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How difficult should the dungeons be?
Ok I am not going to lie, I would like to see an easy dungeon at the start of the game, just to get the feel of it. But once the training wheels are off, I would love to see dungeons with a real challenge to them.
They should break down like the following IMO:
1. Starter - used to show you how to work as a team in dungeons. Lots of light. no gold drops only 1 level
2. Beginner - a little harder than starter, you meet a few nasty's in here, and the rewards are common. All areas lit up to see. very little gold drops 2 to 3 levels
3. Novice - More rooms to deal with, strong monsters, and a couple traps. some areas a dimly lit. Better rewards to be found. some gold drops 5 to 9 levels
4. Adventurer - More dangers in this one, and more levels, Traps are harder to pick up, and now your have puzzles added to the mix. Some light and some dark areas. Rewards are a mix of rare and uncommon items. nice gold drops 10 to 20 levels
5. Advanced - No we are talking, this type of dungeon has it all, Traps of all types, puzzles they need a group to finish, and hidden rooms with there only mystery. Plus no light, so don't forget your torches. Oh and not even treasure chest is what it seems. Maybe it's alive ready to bite your hand off. Rewards are from rare to epic. Tons of gold drops too. levels unknown.
So how do you see it handled?
Comments
Whats more important for me personaly is that hard late game group dungeons have to require skill if possble in various ways. It can mean that you have to know youre enemys weaknes or to dodge good and it always should reqire good team coordination so it will be a meaningfull success in the end. Anyway it should never be something you can do just cause youre gear score is high enough. At least in my opinion.
Tricks and traps, hidden paths that really are hard to find and that punish you if you get hit, non linear dungeons that will reward you for exploring and searching. Special rewards that would randomly spawn each time you enter the dungeon but would be in a random location so you will need to explore to find them.
Hard dungeons should be hard, with puzzles, deadly tricks and traps that should prove deadly if you do not take care. Boss fights that are dynamic with abilities that are not on set timers to be used at predictable times but randomly so you will need to watch for that tell and avoid that attack. Death should be a part of hard content and an acceptance that it might just be too hard to finish a dungeon on your first few times through, you might have to come back several times to crack that final boss.
I just want all levels to be enjoyable and to me if it isn't challenging it isn't that enjoyable. Unless, of course, there are other factors like playing with friends or a good story. Sure, higher level dungeons should be more difficult, but lower level ones should not be a breeze either.
But the thing only the top 1% of motivated people do is called raid, not leveling dungeon. Also, in FF14 raids have been 8-man, so they don't need to be 40-man affairs to count as raid. Just tight difficulty and hard mechanics.
It's also 1% in FF14 with 8-man raids. Because you need a static, never to fall back on gear (like taking a break), pretty good at your class, and lots of time dying to mechanics learning it (expect 5 hours per week at least, doing just that, not counting the time to get people together, to finish it earlier expect 10 hours per week + gathering time)...or to do it 2-3 patches down the line when it's nerfed and you're significantly overgeared for it.
Because yes, don't expect pugs to finish it. You'll be lucky and join a 7-man static missing <insert your class> because they're sick or emergency, and they complete it because they're OP-tier. That'll happen as often as getting your bis without effort.To give you an idea of the difficulty. You can die and wipe and restart for 3 hours, and not progress one bit, and redo that for 3-4 weeks. If leveling dungeons are that hard, people will find other ways to level or stop playing.
I don't mind wiping a couple times, talking about mechanics, and eventually doing it. And instead of an easy 30 min run, it became 60 minutes, but you're better for it. I mind 30 min becoming 300 min though.
I cant help but feel this is part of the reason many games have become somewhat dumbed down in recent years, to the point where there is virtually no challenge. With different difficulty levels for dungeons/raids my take is, are you really seeing the content when most of the mechanics have been removed and all that is left is a tank and spank encounter. Yes you get to see the big bad boss but was it really a rewarding experience when all you did was throw abilities at it until it fell over.
There will be content I may not see in AOC just like there is some content I have not experienced in my current MMO but do I feel entitled to see such content no I don't. I am more than happy for such content to be in games that I play because other enjoy doing truly hard dungeons and raids and more people enjoying the content makes for a larger healthier community and that is a good thing.
I agree that there should be some range from moderate to super challenging. I personally enjoy a challenge but I understand that many games have failed recently when they only appealed to hardcore players or niche gamers.
Thus, it's likely better for some content to be inclusive to casuals in order to generate broader appeal for the game but there should also be some content set aside for those who have invested in time, effort, and involvement with the community (be it guild, friends, or whatever).
Then again, I suppose the semantics of what constitutes a challenge have to be resolved. Many dungeons in games such as GW2 and vanilla Tera seemed impossible at first, but after you grasp a trick or two (being in the right location, memorizing an attack pattern or two, etc.), the dungeons suddenly become a piece of cake. As such, I suppose the answer is for dungeons to include variability and a degree of randomness - at least for boss attacks and the like. Traps and puzzles should probably stay the same. I recall some jumping puzzles in GW2 being pretty challenging even when I knew exactly where to go.
I'm in this (among other things) for nice graphics, and would also like to not ruin my eyes.
So harder challenges yes, but please keep the lights on.
My preference would be that what determines difficulty is how well your character skills fit the obstacles/challenges and how many people you bring along.
And I wish we could reach a point where meaningful successes can partial.
If my objectives for a dungeon are to sneak through, disarm the traps and return with a map of the target areas - I should get credit and rewards for completing those tasks - even if I don't kill anything in the dungeon.
Adding multiple difficulties to a dungeon or raid (like WOW) is watering down of content in my opinion. It feels less rewarding beating something that has had its mechanics and strength reduced just so it can be beaten easier and it makes the encounter seem less important and grand in terms of the lore.
-I want some dungeons to be easy... maybe even empty, as the occupants are basically out to hunt for food depending on the time of day.
-I want some moderate, where you could figure stuff out as you go and generally put on a thinking cap and come out alive.
-I want some difficult that takes careful planning of every encounter like it's a fight for life and death (as real fights generally are).
-I want some dungeons that are impossible (possibly based on level).
That being said, I don't think "any" of the dungeons, especially if they are open world, to have a set on a map or whatnot associated with it... I think it should have to be discovered. That also means that I would like a vast majority of content starting off to be impossible without gaining experience and knowledge from other players.
It's 1% because not all hardcore gamers raid. You got people who 1) don't have the time (the fail practice thing is time-consuming) 2) don't have a static (pugging is asking for a lot more fail, you won't finish in the same patch cycle) 3) aren't interested in raid (a lot more than you think) 4) too new to be there anyway.
I played FF14 over 70 hours a week, actively doing something, and I never finished a raid in its patch cycle. The guild I was in didn't have 8 stable enough schedule people who were also interested to raid (despite having a member count around 100, purging inactives after 3 weeks to be sure we didn't kick someone who went on vacation), so its resulted in half-guild half-pug affairs, where we mostly fail for an hour, then people get bored, and that was it for the week.The best times were when we managed 6-7 or 8 guild people that evening, not that we progressed much more, but failing as a guild was more meaningful. I don't mind failing as much when I know we're progressing and we get better next week, vs a pug where next week you'll get a fully different team, so progress wasn't made, no coordination gained. That's for raid. I wouldn't endure entire weeks of failing leveling dungeons.
I could have found a static back then, I was geared, I had time, I wasn't bad in skill. I just don't like playing with complete strangers. In real life I also don't like meeting complete strangers. It's draining, awkward, and I find it more annoying than worthwhile. I select who I play with by how well we get on before doing something together, rather than gauge how the thing goes (then you get some trolls). I generally avoided harassment in every MMO due to selecting like this.
And I don't regret it. If FF14's inventory was less stupid and crafting less RNG, while being more relevant (possibly raid tier lv, though not better). I would probably have stayed, even if I didn't get to finish raids the patch they came in.
Dungeons in social games have been declining in difficulty ever since MMO's launched, causing players to slip in skill at the same time. People don't take dungeons seriously anymore and just view them as filler content, making them not try or even read a damn guide. Hate this decline I hope AoC fixes it.
You should reread what I wrote, you seem to have taken what I said as about AoC. It was about FF14 raids. And was saying that only roughly 1% of people even raid, others have reasons
What I don't want is leveling dungeons, the kind we are more or less forced to do to level, to be this difficult.
We are talking about Ashes so I assumed you were comparing what the current outlook on raiding is in other mmos to what it will be like in Ashes
But we won't be forced to level through dungeons. Dungeons will be too rare for that and Steven has already said they don't want us to have to grind, so we won't be grinding dungeons to get exp.
@Duninn I hope so too dude.
Story elements included in the dungeon could be instanced if necessary but much of the dungeon could be open world like any other zone.
This is when you skillset is at the lowest and you don't possess a lot of CC abilities, threat generation, and things of that nature. As you progress, things of course pick up the pace because you are more experienced, have a larger kit to work with, and the game now expects you to have these group dynamics and strategies down enough to work out your own strategies for victory.
You always have to leave some kind of cushion for that first dungeon because not everyone will be a 15+ year old mmo vet who's been there, done that. That's not to say you should be able to watch netflix and faceroll yourself through it either, but it shouldn't force them to feel punished for the slightest mistake on that first go. After that initial introduction however, give them hell from there on out.
There's also the possibility of mini-rewards from things like chests behind a waterfall that players can only get to after navigating a series of traps and puzzles.
The ideal situation would be to have both the mini-rewards along the way and a compiled reward at the end.
Either way, I'm in favor of tallying up contributions from a multitude of measurable factors (including healing, buffs, challenge completion and item acquisition for things such as keys & maps). Perhaps I'm too competitive but, as I've mentioned in other threads, I'd also like the option to have leaderboards in dungeons (in addition to raids, and PVP etc.). Toxic players will be toxic anyway, so I can't see there being a huge spike in bullying just because someone is lower down on the leaderboard for a given dungeon run.