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QOTD: How hard do YOU think open world content should be?
Yuquiyu
Member
first and foremost i wanna sincerely thank all of you who wished me a happy birthday
doe i wasn't able to go too the shooting range due to my moms surgery that day i was able to have cake for the first time in years! so seriously thank you all who wished me a happy birthday, it made my day in many ways
now lets get onto todays topic!
QOTD: How hard do YOU think open world content should be? aka the tittle of this discussion!
do you think random open world content should be able to be soloed or do you think it should be made for small group sizes varying from 3-6 players?
lmk what you guys think!
doe i wasn't able to go too the shooting range due to my moms surgery that day i was able to have cake for the first time in years! so seriously thank you all who wished me a happy birthday, it made my day in many ways
now lets get onto todays topic!
QOTD: How hard do YOU think open world content should be? aka the tittle of this discussion!
do you think random open world content should be able to be soloed or do you think it should be made for small group sizes varying from 3-6 players?
lmk what you guys think!
1
Comments
And as for elites, for the most part you shouldnt be able to solo them with the exception of pet classes for obvious reasons. Perhaps you can kite one to death but yeah thats about it. Lastly, bosses should never be soloable.
This is all assuming appropriate area/level design.
I want the world to be a dangerous place that makes us each think....Should I leave my home today or should I sit in my cozy little tavern and play silly mini games with others? On top of that I want people to think "Should I go farming for materials ro should I go farming for people for their farmed materials?".
I want it to feel punishing but highly rewarding for teamwork. Mindless button mashing to mow through mobs just isn't fun.
so completely unplayable? cool cool
The leveling/questing experience should be balanced to be just right. It can be a bit more challenging when the game tries to teach you something, but otherwise the difficulty should be appropriate learning towards moderate to easy (if you followed all the steps and tasks the game told you to do).
Eternal Guild
( Web | Discord )
I can agree w/ most of this, but I would add that elites should be soloable by those that know their class well. Groups can always make things easier and elites should present a challenge, but I like knowing that there's at least a chance if I play well.
Ah yeah I meant that when i said "for the most part". I was trying to just stick with pure mechanics vs mechanics.
I also want to see elite monsters be elite again. If I have to bring some friends along to kill these elite guys, that just makes it feel like an mmo to me. Of course it should be worth killing these elite monsters. If they don't give a nice reward, like a blue item or crafting material, then elite monsters are just a nuisance to be avoided.
I play RPGs for the story experience; not for the challenge.
I'm a casual challenge player rather than a hardcore challenge player.
I just want interesting stuff to do.
I don't need the mobs to be "difficult".
I would like the mobs to have diverse interactions so that I'm not always using the same 5 abilities in the exact same order or just based on cooldowns.
In WoW, I'm playing an Alliance Human for the first time ever (because I can finally create a character who looks like me). Druid is not available, so I'm playing a Rogue. Rogue as an ability called Kick which interrupts spell-casting. Normally, I use Kick fairly early in my rotation, but against Mages, I hold off on Kick until I see them start to cast. I'd like to be thinking, "Oh! If they are spellcasting Fireball, I'm going to counter with Hail."
I really just want to be able to think through different strategies with different mobs. And, I'd like to be able to adjust to and complement the abilities that other characters around me might be using.
I also wish we had more complex mobs. Pantheon game design has dispositions: Blood-thirsty; Cunning; Alarmist; Sniper; Pyrophobic.
I'd love to have some like that added into the mix.
After 25 a duo trio is best till 35 for good gains. Solo should slow down a lot.
35-40 should be a group effort to maintain good gains.
40-50 gains should be hard and slow for a group and fruitless for non group. If you wanna solo/small team past 40 expect death to be very ez and returns very small and slow
Open world should be hard.
Archers should use bows, not spears. Players should maintain good provisions and groups should look for a good composition, not yolo.
Raidbosses und Group Sized Bosses
In terms of actual mechanical difficulty. I don't think that bosses need to be easier than Instanced Bosses at all. Just give the players attempting the boss a defensible access to the boss room, which can be a portal (as we have seen in the AoC Dungeons already) or narrow chokepoints you have to pass in order to get to the boss arena. People who want to try the boss undisturbed can just bring a second or even third raid to help defend their attempt. If people can't kill certain bosses, because all their attempts get disturbed by a rivaling guild, that there are still a couple of options available:
If they can't do that, then they shouldn't be the ones killing the boss in the first place.
Its supposed to be a social game about community. Let the community resolve these issue through social interaction instead of arbitrary or pseudo instancing.
Regular Monsters
should be killable alone, but each one of them should have the possibility of killing you, if you just mindlessly hammer on your buttons. There is a lot of games, where monsters have deeper mechanics which you can simply ignore., as failing them has basicaly no consequences (maybe 5% damage to your health).
I pray that AoC won't be one of them. Each monster doesn't need a plethora of mechanics, but failing them should hurt significantly with the threat of dying for multiple failures. These mechanics should be knowledge based or telegraphed, not random to keep the player a fair chance to not die at all if he plays properly.
I like this point about 1v1 monsters a lot - they can be easily handled, but you have to be paying attention to 'not stand in the fire'
I think that's a great way to reward conscious play, and it lets you handle things way above your level if you play well enough
I do like difficulty in my open world content. I want to see more of a focus on needing groups to do anything.
It is one of the things that was so good about FFXI. Getting anywhere was a time sync, finding a group was a time sync, being in a group was a time sync. All of this made the game feel more rewarding. When you could not find a group you were stuck doing content under your level. Which was fine. It made you want to socialize more. It made you want to be apart of communities within the game to get into groups faster. Then when you log on, you have people asking you to come do things within minutes. If you conduct yourself right, you end up having so many opportunities that you have to turn down groups. Sure, you can get that in any game, but when everything is so hard solo that you need a group to do just about anything. The socialization just ends up being better. You would have to have player a old school MMO to really get a feel for this.
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
As for difficulty, I think it should be hard but fair. Open-world content for classic wow is an ok example of mob-danger. However, I do feel like things should slowly ramp up to be harder to always solo. Playing with others should always be a bonus, and I feel like group experience should appropriately reflect this. If fighting equal level normal mobs is a bit of a danger, playing with a duo should let you mostly relax, but playing with a full party in an open world dungeon or elite area should always be the most efficient.
Of course I also think there should be some OW bosses / things that require both a full group and a raid to take down.
I agree. You have to allow those solo types some way to play. Just not Monty hall easy.
I agree here. Watching one of the latest Kevin Jordan videos he touched on this. When the game is harder with no LFG and fast travel the server population was less toxic as you needed the other players to do stuff. If you got into a dungeon and the tank didn't know how to tank you had to choose spend a few minutes and help them out teach them how to tank or spend what might be 2 hours trying to replace them.
I would like to see the open world be on the harder side. Killing mobs your level is a mild challenge but something 2-3 levels up will stomp you. I also lie when there is a chance they will call for help. Nothing bothered me more then pulling 1 humanoid from a group and all their friends stand there and watch you kill him just to pull another and do it again. Random patrols is also another one I like. Those that played WoW during the Burning Crusade days will remember the Fel Reaver. A giant mob that patrolled a starting zone that was 5 man content at max level. For being as big as he was he was awful sneaky most people if not paying attention to your surroundings got stomped by him at least once. Heard stories of a similar Dragon in EQ.