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Difficulty vs Interesting.
consultant
Member
Seen a lot of people ask for more difficulty. But think IS should be go into the direction of more interesting and more engaging. Now I have already posted about this topic a lot but today I want to look at as the possobility of dying. Not talking about death or wipe percentages either. More of sense of dager type of thing.
I already referenced this game a lot but since you just so happen to have one of its designers.....
In XCOM Enemy Unkown near the end of the game after all the upgrades your head has to be in the game or you will die. I could play 20 games and do extremely well every game but I have to make the smart decisions. The reason I put it that way is because it is not about having people die a certain amount times. Sounds of kind of weird well if you do not die then it is not difficult. But let me make another point.
If you are out in the open world or doing a dungeoun and the possibility of dying just is not there, and there is nothing that needs to be avoided with no sense of danger then your mind tends to be less engaged and it becomes boring. But lets talk about were we do not want be at. Lets say you are doing a WoW normal dungeoun if you die then you kind of become the laughing stock of the dungeoun. Dying is taboo. Same thing out in the open world. (not to make fun of any one just to be clear I have died in normal dungeouns just long time ago)
Think best way to address this is sometimes things become lethal but can be avoided so you have to pay attention. Already posted volumes on this so not going to repost.
Far as difficulty is concerned well technically it is not difficult if every one is doing it. So IS can in fact put difficult content in the game. But it just only going to benifit the people that actually do that content which should be a small percentage of player popualtion. So kind of pointless as far as the rest your player base is concerned. So you have to put a sense of danger in your most popular content which technically will not be difficult.. Plenty of fun ways to do that.
I already referenced this game a lot but since you just so happen to have one of its designers.....
In XCOM Enemy Unkown near the end of the game after all the upgrades your head has to be in the game or you will die. I could play 20 games and do extremely well every game but I have to make the smart decisions. The reason I put it that way is because it is not about having people die a certain amount times. Sounds of kind of weird well if you do not die then it is not difficult. But let me make another point.
If you are out in the open world or doing a dungeoun and the possibility of dying just is not there, and there is nothing that needs to be avoided with no sense of danger then your mind tends to be less engaged and it becomes boring. But lets talk about were we do not want be at. Lets say you are doing a WoW normal dungeoun if you die then you kind of become the laughing stock of the dungeoun. Dying is taboo. Same thing out in the open world. (not to make fun of any one just to be clear I have died in normal dungeouns just long time ago)
Think best way to address this is sometimes things become lethal but can be avoided so you have to pay attention. Already posted volumes on this so not going to repost.
Far as difficulty is concerned well technically it is not difficult if every one is doing it. So IS can in fact put difficult content in the game. But it just only going to benifit the people that actually do that content which should be a small percentage of player popualtion. So kind of pointless as far as the rest your player base is concerned. So you have to put a sense of danger in your most popular content which technically will not be difficult.. Plenty of fun ways to do that.
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Video games in general (and mmorpgs specifically) used to be difficult (EQ, vanilla WoW or vanilla EQ2 for example). They punished the player for mistakes and it took time (lots of time) to learn the game and actually excel. Much of it required cooperation and good decision making. This challenge created engagement. Very little of those requirements exist now. Look at how WoW or EQ2 progressed from vanilla - they were deliberately made easier and easier, either making leveling faster, level boosters, removing or reducing death penalties (no chasing your corpse for example), reducing enemy difficulty to remove cooperative needs, reducing mechanics, difficult quest steps removed, better questing waypoints, etc. These made the game less challenging, and therefore less frustrating for starting players - but it is a fallacy to suggest they improved the game.
Noone should expect to start the game as an expert and do well or even okay. When you start, you suck, and you should suck. Frustration, dying, and mistakes should be expected while you learn, adapt, and gain some semblance of competence at the game, and that takes time. You cannot cater to the new player audience for very long without losing your moderate term and veteran players. If the game difficulty is not particularly difficult for new players, it is likely to be simple and unchallenging for players that actually know the game well. For moderate term or veteran players to feel challenged and engaged, that likely translates to players who just start, finding the game VERY VERY difficult.
There are likely some mechanisms to maybe reduce the frustration for starting players, but personally I'd rather not have them. I expect to suffer while I learn, and maybe that's for a long time; but finally achieving competence as player wouldn't mean anything without the initial sacrifice.
Just my thoughts on it
Challenge makes it interesting like any other sport if you have no challenge why bother(other then teaching).
One Punch Man is a good example look how bored that dude is.
I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing that it took me awhile to get that reference.
Anyhoo, it's incredibly hard to make a game engaging without also increasing the difficulty. The main way to do this is through mystery. Telltale Games are great at this with titles like "The Wolf Among Us", which are for all intents and purposes very easy games, but they suck you in with the story and the mystery you are set to uncover.
Of course, this is a completely different genre to an mmorpg, so I think the key to making an mmorpg engaging (especially during the levelling phase) is to give players a reason to care about the world they are in. Make the environments and creatures in it interesting and varied. On top of that you need to give players a reason to explore the world, rather than being shepherded from point A to point B by the quest system.
The top end of EQ has never been hard.
Sure, the average every day act of killing general base population in EQ is (was) harder than in either EQ2 or WoW, but both of those games have top end content that is much, much more difficult than anything in EQ.
It is easier to kill any given expansion boss in EQ than it is in EQ2, so saying EQ is harder is disingenuous at best.
Also, corpse runs are not hard. They are also not fun. All they are is a time sink.
Now, sure, they can be made fun in the right circumstances and with the right people, but so can anything in an MMO. That fact alone doesn't make corpse runs fun, it makes the people you are playing with fun.
I dont disagree with any of this. EQ2 endgame and WoW endgame certainly is (was) more difficult than EQ was, and neither were perfect. But in my view that's honestly part of the problem with WoW or EQ2 now. They hold your hand all the way until end game, and suddenly players with only basic build and combat mechanics can't find people willing to raid with them until they actually hone those skills, learn the meta, and spec accordingly. Wouldn't you agree that a game that forces you to learn those skills as you progress so you're prepared for endgame activity when you get there is better designed?
As for corpse runs - they're typically not fun (group corpse runs or helping guildmates with corpse runs notwithstanding), but that's the point. Lessons taught without consequences are lessons never learned. They also encouraged teamwork and cooperation, which I don't see as a bad thing.
I wouldn't want to see Demon Souls the MMO, but I'd hate to have my hand held throughout.
I still do not understand why WoW has so many players but that is another discussion
WoW also has a very bad trend of everything becoming just another DPS race at a certain point. Ashes and WoW are different games but content should be challenging no matter if we play it today or in a year or two and that comes down to not making bosses sponges but mechanic-rich encounters, balancing of the game (char vs gear vs spells, etc)
To be honest I miss the days that to clear a raid with 7-8 bosses we had to work for weeks or months even to kill all of them. During that time we improved our tactics on the other bosses, but the fight felt rewarding and these are memories that last.
Clearing a raid in WoW feels great but doesn't give me that same satisfaction. It doesn't give me lasting memory. Clearing the rift for example in LotRO, my guild and I, still talk about it .... 10 years after
In EQ, the spec you would use for leveling was not the same as the one you would use for raiding. The way you functioned in a group while leveling was not the same as how you functioned in a raid (other than perhaps tanks).
EQ2 did do a fair amount of hand holding - less than current MMO's, but more than is needed. However, it also did give players the opportunity to go off on their own if they wished.
If players leveling up wanted to take on the Signature and Heritage quests as they went, by the time they hit the level cap, they would have a far greater understanding of how to function in a group and a raid, of what builds to use, they would hit that level cap faster, and they would be better geared when they got there. I mean, the games heritage quests had you raiding by level 30.
The problem is, many players simply didn't want to take this path. EQ2 offered players a more productive path with the opportunity to learn more about the games systems, the games lore, the class you are playing and how to function in a situation with many other players, or it offered a slower, less productive path without those same opportunities.
Players by and large looked at these two paths, and took the second option.
You shouldn't blame EQ2 for that, imo.
As for corpse runs, I like the comment one of the senior developers made in relation to it when they took them out of EQ2. While I don't have a verbatim quote, it was along the lines of "people that don't learn from death in a game also won't learn from death+corpse run".
Basically, corpse runs are only a valid penalty when the player, the group or the raid decide to give up for the night, as if you are determined to give the content another try, you are faced with getting back to where your corpse is anyway. This meant that 99% of the time, the corpse penalty of death was totally insignificant, and the few times it was significant (multiple deaths attempting to get to a corpse) it was far more significant than it should have been.
Don't get me wrong, I am all for death penalties, and I do think EQ2 (and WoW) need to increase theirs - even now.
However, to me, a good death penalty is one that requires the player expend time, but where the player is largely able to do that at a time that suits them, and in a manner that they find at least somewhat enjoyable.
This is why I am a fan of a heavy item repair cost as a penalty.
For me, "interesting" (or fun) is flow-state/being in the zone.
Difficulty on its own doesn't make things fun - in fact if you vary difficulty for a high skilled player, you give them space to breathe as they move between flow state, control and relaxation. You definitely want flow state in the mix though - which requires an appropriately high level of difficulty to work.
There is so much to say about Flow Theory.
I miss the days when I would take the group into a raid and spend 3 hours working on a boss. To us this wasn't a long time and we did this 3 times a week. The first day we would maybe get 1-2 bosses down. By the end of the week 3-5 bosses would be dead and we would have upgraded some of our players pretty significantly. Next week we would be able to quickly progress through 2-4 bosses on night one opening up the ability to progress further than before. These moments in wow felt like the game was balanced, it grew us as a group and we bonded (and also made fun of people for standing in fire naturally). All of this is gone from WOW now and I am hoping for some sense of this in AOC.