I want challenge not difficulty. Bloodborne dark souls type hard is just frustrating and unenjoyable to me as was some of the older raids in vanilla WOW. At the same time alot of bosses in newer MMO's have just become mindless tank n spanks which isnt fun either. I think Final Fantasy does a somewhat decent job at difficulty. My sweet spot for difficulty is learning the fight through on screen q's as opposed to being so hard you have to spend 30 minutes researching how to beat a encounter.
I want challenge not difficulty. Bloodborne dark souls type hard is just frustrating and unenjoyable to me as was some of the older raids in vanilla WOW. At the same time alot of bosses in newer MMO's have just become mindless tank n spanks which isnt fun either. I think Final Fantasy does a somewhat decent job at difficulty. My sweet spot for difficulty is learning the fight through on screen q's as opposed to being so hard you have to spend 30 minutes researching how to beat a encounter.
Learning how to beat a boss by reading on a wiki is not really difficult. In fact I think a lot of the problem with current MMOs have to do with that.
Beating a boss the first time can be hard but doing it after that gets easier and easier as you learn it's moves and since MMOs are a lot about repeating the same endgame content over and over that isn't good.
A better Ai and more randomness forcing you to think on the spot would make the long term fun far better. And the randomness need to be enough to make any research at least rather hard, just having 3 variants of the same boss ain't good enough.
The you of course need to figure out how difficult each boss should be to maximize the fun, having tons of close to impossible bosses isn't fun either just like having tons of bosses that just die no matter how poorly you play isn't.
Some bosses do need to be easier then others and the amount of harder needs to go up as you progress in the game. You don't put up a legendary hero against a goblin mystic more then you put a peasant who just decided to become an adventurer against an ancient dragon or lich.
A good MMO have varied difficulty but starting out with generaly easy content and slowly ramp the difficulty up as you progress but with some exceptions in both directions.
Today games are easy compare to the Old days when you had no maps,No Markers N.S.E.W, no light in dungeon, no friend to hold your hand ...Yeah those were the good ol days when you had to use your brain...Today games are a joke and easy...lol
nah .. mapping is not difficult .. just tedious and boring. I remember the first Might & Magic and the graphing paper. I am glad those days are over.
Today games are easy compare to the Old days when you had no maps,No Markers N.S.E.W, no light in dungeon, no friend to hold your hand ...Yeah those were the good ol days when you had to use your brain...Today games are a joke and easy...lol
nah .. mapping is not difficult .. just tedious and boring. I remember the first Might & Magic and the graphing paper. I am glad those days are over.
I have to say I enjoy some modern mapping features, just not when they become the equivalent of a GPS system.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I would. I hate it's always that causal meh PvE then only gets hard on end-game Dungeons or Raids.
I think they traded difficulty for grind, the difficulty became on many the time it takes instead of your skill at it, this on the usual open-world PvE.
I don't really understand the graphic paper concept. No one was forcing you to map things out. I never mapped anything out in UO, Everquest, or the many single player games I played. In many ways, this is actually better because most people do all the content because they feel they need to due to the quest log and map pointing them out. Inf fact it can often be more fun to just inadvertently skip some of the content in the game unintentionally. After you finish the game you might find out later that there was something you missed and that is also part of the fun as you want to go back and find those little things. If it is all mapped out the experience is rather dull IMO.
Whether or not this is difficult or not is arguable, but I know most people in the days of EQ could not make maps or just didn't have a clue how to. This type of information was not as easily available as most information is today. Most people were still going on here say in the 90s. Not many people knew what the internet was. If you could use it, navigate it, download, install software, etc. you were far ahead of the game. I think most of the people here that are now acquainted with computers were probably the ones being told not to be afraid to restart their device or reinstall the software. The difficulty is relative to the time period and what is going on in it. Now everyone thinks they are a computer expert because they can follow easy tutorials that are everywhere. Imagine having to do things without tutorials and with crapy hardware and buggy unintuitive software that is made for super geeks entertainment.
I remember making dungeon maps in Lineage until I found screenshots of them online. I had a folder with all the important dungeon maps from the wiki and notes. Understanding the map layout in some of those dungeons, especially the tower of insolence, was very important.
I am glad I don't have to do that anymore. I tend not to play game with features, or lack of, like that anymore.
It seems to me there is some measure of excitement due to getting lost. Even with a basic idea of the layout of places in Everquest I felt fairly scared going through a dungeon in a traveling scenario like getting from Runnyeye to Freeport. Even when I was way above the level of the enemies it was fairly scary and when you are running from a train to escape the dungeon it's easy to make a wrong turn even if you know the place via a visual map in your brain. Personally, I think something is taken away from the experience when you have a map to guide you. These types of games are all about exploring the unknown and potentially dangerous. It is similar to what our ancestors would have faced when they first explored, but without any real risks. It would all be formulated in your head. Most games these game lack the ability to push peoples emotional buttons and I find it's kind of dull because of that. This is the age of playing it safe or doing the safe thing. There were games I played in the 80s and 90s which really manipulated peoples emotions through things like feeling lost, alone, in the dark, scary noises, etc. It was all environment-related manipulation that invoked things like fear and paranoia. This may not be considered good, but I think it can be fun to explore all the different emotions and not be regulated to just the safe ones.
I don't really understand the graphic paper concept. No one was forcing you to map things out. I never mapped anything out in UO, Everquest, or the many single player games I played. In many ways, this is actually better because most people do all the content because they feel they need to due to the quest log and map pointing them out. Inf fact it can often be more fun to just inadvertently skip some of the content in the game unintentionally. After you finish the game you might find out later that there was something you missed and that is also part of the fun as you want to go back and find those little things. If it is all mapped out the experience is rather dull IMO.
Whether or not this is difficult or not is arguable, but I know most people in the days of EQ could not make maps or just didn't have a clue how to. This type of information was not as easily available as most information is today. Most people were still going on here say in the 90s. Not many people knew what the internet was. If you could use it, navigate it, download, install software, etc. you were far ahead of the game. I think most of the people here that are now acquainted with computers were probably the ones being told not to be afraid to restart their device or reinstall the software. The difficulty is relative to the time period and what is going on in it. Now everyone thinks they are a computer expert because they can follow easy tutorials that are everywhere. Imagine having to do things without tutorials and with crapy hardware and buggy unintuitive software that is made for super geeks entertainment.
Graph paper is a concept from far before MMORPGS... perhaps before your time.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
MMOs (Real MMOs not "Angry Birds is an MMO!") are the genre that is suffering because:
A. They offer no challenge outside PvP. B. People hate MMO PvP due to level/gear imbalance.
It's the reason there are almost no AAA titles in currently development and the majority of the titles in kickstarter are promising PvP focus, less stat disparity, and less grinding.
nah ... no AAA titles in development is caused by players are attractive to other games now (like MOBAs, or online shooters).
Clearly a challenge is not needed to be financially successful in making games ... otherwise you don't see "easy mode" as an option in so many single player games.
As for "real" MMOs, they are pretty much irrelevant whether there is a pve challenge or not.
Easy mode being an option doesn't disprove my point. Easy is an option but so is legendary / insane / "this is deus ex" etc.
Like you just said most people are leaving for MOBAs or Online Shooters. Games based on competition with other players (An inherently challenge mode) where you don't even have stat gap to protect you if you suck.
"Easy" games are suffering. Challenging games are consuming their player base. Thanks for backing up my point.
I don't play games for difficulty, I play them for fun. A challenging game can however still be fun (like Dark Souls).
Challenge in MMOs however has always come down to...
For PvE- "get 20+ people into a raid group! be a lemming and follow the leader, listen to what he says like a good little lemming and stay out of the fire"
PvP is probably more challenging, but for MMOs has always come down to- -Zerg the enemy -Overpower the enemy with OP items/skills. -Gank that little level 1 or low skilled noob over and over to make him quit the game
MMOs have never once at all been challenging. Planetside 2 is probably the only challenging MMO because it relies on pure skill, not overpowered characters or/and items. EVE gets really close too to being actually challenging. But both end up with zergs winning against any small group player
If you want true challenge and skill, MMOs are NOT the genre to be in. Play MOBAs like league of legends or heroes of the storm...true challenging games that rely on teamwork, no overpowered characters and you can't gank a level 1 over and over.
Otherwise, there is no challenge in being level 110 ganking low levels or maxed skilled or having overpowered items, and there is definitely no challenge in being in a zerg. Nor is there a challenge in being a little lemming in raid content.
However, both those statements change if you are the leader of a raid or leader of a PvP group. That is true challenge, and actually a lot of fun too if that is what your into.
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
Imagine if there was an MMO like Dark Souls. Dark, depressing world, get killed in 2-3 hits at most, intense combat...raids would be hard...PvP would be even harder...
That would be true fun. Though I'd like to see it balanced that a level 1 could still kill a max level in 2-3 hits otherwise it just becomes a gankfest of PvPers wanting to kill their own MMO by driving out newbies to the game.
If even a level 1 could kill a max level, that would be a true challenge and skillful game. It be like a FPS in many ways. Very different than most MMOs that have no challenge when you have overpowered items/skills/levels. PvPers in the MMO genre aren't true PvPers like you see in MOBAs, most of them just want to gank newbies and kill their MMO by driving away players. They don't really want a true PvP experience.
In fact PvPers are bigger carebears in MMOs than even PvErs or RPers. Any time something happens that effects them they whine harder than any PvEr ever does lol. And take away their overpoweredness and they whine even harder still. They don't want a challenging atmosphere, they just want to gank level 1s.
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
Imagine if there was an MMO like Dark Souls. Dark, depressing world, get killed in 2-3 hits at most, intense combat...raids would be hard...PvP would be even harder...
That would be true fun. Though I'd like to see it balanced that a level 1 could still kill a max level in 2-3 hits otherwise it just becomes a gankfest of PvPers wanting to kill their own MMO by driving out newbies to the game.
If even a level 1 could kill a max level, that would be a true challenge and skillful game. It be like a FPS in many ways. Very different than most MMOs that have no challenge when you have overpowered items/skills/levels.
Problem with hard raids is it is not just about you, but also you need to find a large group of people who not only play good, but show up on time, don't have short tempers, pleasant company for long hours, and don't listen to mainstream music.
Now I never mind when someone plays badly, I do mind bad attitudes and I know it is hard to believe because I am such a lovely creature but I am not that pretty around the things I have no tolerance for.
I did my share of raiding with world's top guilds and I was a recruitment officer for one of them. It took a lot out of me to have a functional roster. And I realized I don't want to have children--period.
Constantine, The Console Poster
"One of the most difficult tasks men can perform, however much others may despise it, is the invention of good games and it cannot be done by men out of touch with their instinctive selves." - Carl Jung
Imagine if there was an MMO like Dark Souls. Dark, depressing world, get killed in 2-3 hits at most, intense combat...raids would be hard...PvP would be even harder...
That would be true fun. Though I'd like to see it balanced that a level 1 could still kill a max level in 2-3 hits otherwise it just becomes a gankfest of PvPers wanting to kill their own MMO by driving out newbies to the game.
If even a level 1 could kill a max level, that would be a true challenge and skillful game. It be like a FPS in many ways. Very different than most MMOs that have no challenge when you have overpowered items/skills/levels.
Problem with hard raids is it is not just about you, but also you need to find a large group of people who not only play good, but show up on time, don't have short tempers, pleasant company for long hours, and don't listen to mainstream music.
Now I never mind when someone plays badly, I do mind bad attitudes and I know it is hard to believe because I am such a lovely creature but I am not that pretty around the things I have no tolerance for.
I did my share of raiding with world's top guilds and I was a recruitment officer for one of them. It took a lot out of me to have a functional roster. And I realized I don't want to have children--period.
personally speaking when it comes to new ideas on an MMO or a game I stop listening at the word combat.
Not that I am against combat, but rather I think its time for ideas to move away from that being a central focused for nearly literally all games.
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Imagine if there was an MMO like Dark Souls. Dark, depressing world, get killed in 2-3 hits at most, intense combat...raids would be hard...PvP would be even harder...
That would be true fun. Though I'd like to see it balanced that a level 1 could still kill a max level in 2-3 hits otherwise it just becomes a gankfest of PvPers wanting to kill their own MMO by driving out newbies to the game.
If even a level 1 could kill a max level, that would be a true challenge and skillful game. It be like a FPS in many ways. Very different than most MMOs that have no challenge when you have overpowered items/skills/levels.
Problem with hard raids is it is not just about you, but also you need to find a large group of people who not only play good, but show up on time, don't have short tempers, pleasant company for long hours, and don't listen to mainstream music.
Now I never mind when someone plays badly, I do mind bad attitudes and I know it is hard to believe because I am such a lovely creature but I am not that pretty around the things I have no tolerance for.
I did my share of raiding with world's top guilds and I was a recruitment officer for one of them. It took a lot out of me to have a functional roster. And I realized I don't want to have children--period.
true, and actually bringing that point...that was a huge reason Wildstar failed. Not many people want hard raids.
I guess I should have ignored the raid idea and went with a challenging PvP game that is like Dark Souls. Not as much on the PvE side, but more on the PvP side. Sure the PvE raiders wouldn't like it and wouldn't play if it was PvP focused...but its best to focus either on PvE or PvP anyway or you piss both groups off.
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
It's a matter that intrapersonal knowledge is something you develop like anything else. You have to get to know yourself and learn why you truly do things.
Anyone who says "I don't play games for challenge" doesn't understand why they play games.
Have you ever played a game and then afterwards you're thinking about aspects of that game? Considering unit combos and counters to certain strategies in an RTS? Thinking over your build in an RPG? Considering a puzzle you had trouble with in a Zelda or Myst game?
That's a form of challenge. You don't find yourself thinking about mowing the lawn the same way after the task is done because it wasn't a mentally challenging task. Good games are.
You play games for challenge whether you realize it or not.
Depends entirely on what type of difficulty. Just about every MMO out there has difficult twitch gameplay, despite DMKano's allegedly astronomical twitch skills.
I tired of difficult twitch gameplay in the original XBox era, so i require difficulty in slow/turn-based games; strategy, luck, coordination, and determination etc.
It's a matter that intrapersonal knowledge is something you develop like anything else. You have to get to know yourself and learn why you truly do things.
Anyone who says "I don't play games for challenge" doesn't understand why they play games.
Have you ever played a game and then afterwards you're thinking about aspects of that game? Considering unit combos and counters to certain strategies in an RTS? Thinking over your build in an RPG? Considering a puzzle you had trouble with in a Zelda or Myst game?
That's a form of challenge. You don't find yourself thinking about mowing the lawn the same way after the task is done because it wasn't a mentally challenging task. Good games are.
You play games for challenge whether you realize it or not.
he says he doesnt play games for a challenge and then literally in the next post he talks about how cool it would be if the game was hard.
so he needs to know thy self indeed!
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
It's a matter that intrapersonal knowledge is something you develop like anything else. You have to get to know yourself and learn why you truly do things.
Anyone who says "I don't play games for challenge" doesn't understand why they play games.
Have you ever played a game and then afterwards you're thinking about aspects of that game? Considering unit combos and counters to certain strategies in an RTS? Thinking over your build in an RPG? Considering a puzzle you had trouble with in a Zelda or Myst game?
That's a form of challenge. You don't find yourself thinking about mowing the lawn the same way after the task is done because it wasn't a mentally challenging task. Good games are.
You play games for challenge whether you realize it or not.
That doesn't even apply to me, a gamer of +35 years, around a decade in eSports competition scene, and still active here and there.
There are games that give me no challenge, and I go through them like I go through a book or a movie. Unless you consider watching a movie challenging. And no, you can't say if a game isn't challenging then it is not good.
You can argue that challenging might increase the fun factor, but then again, it can also decrease it. For example, many of my friends quit Bloodborne because it was too hard for them. They didn't enjoy it. And of them holds a World Q3A title--he used to love challenges, but not anymore. He just wants games on easy mode now. He liked the story and lore of Bloodborne so much that he couldn't just let go, so he watched a ~50hr playthrough on YouTube instead, and to this day he wished that game was easier so he could play it.
Constantine, The Console Poster
"One of the most difficult tasks men can perform, however much others may despise it, is the invention of good games and it cannot be done by men out of touch with their instinctive selves." - Carl Jung
Sure good movies present a challenge. Ever wonder why most movies are not as enjoyable on the next viewing? Because you already know what they contain. And the movies that do have high rewatch value are ones that you see things you missed the first time.
Same reason why you roll your eyes and get bored super fast when a movie is nothing but trite sayings and stereotypical tropes.
We want the media we consume to cause us to think about things in a different way. Teach us something we didn't know before. Push us to limits we haven't crossed before. Maybe by interesting plot twists that make us think. Maybe by massive special effects that are a shock to our senses. Anything that doesn't do these things is what we refer to as "stale" or "boring".
But the ideal challenge for us is a challenge that is hard enough to push our boundaries, but not so ridiculous we get nothing from it. That's why most of us would rather play Starcraft 2 than QWOP.
And how much we want our boundaries pushed varies from person to person. Which boundaries we want pushed varies from person to person. But if you didn't want your boundaries pushed AKA to be challenged, you wouldn't be playing games. Hell, you wouldn't even be a part of the human experience.
I don't really understand the graphic paper concept. No one was forcing you to map things out. I never mapped anything out in UO, Everquest, or the many single player games I played. In many ways, this is actually better because most people do all the content because they feel they need to due to the quest log and map pointing them out. Inf fact it can often be more fun to just inadvertently skip some of the content in the game unintentionally. After you finish the game you might find out later that there was something you missed and that is also part of the fun as you want to go back and find those little things. If it is all mapped out the experience is rather dull IMO.
Whether or not this is difficult or not is arguable, but I know most people in the days of EQ could not make maps or just didn't have a clue how to. This type of information was not as easily available as most information is today. Most people were still going on here say in the 90s. Not many people knew what the internet was. If you could use it, navigate it, download, install software, etc. you were far ahead of the game. I think most of the people here that are now acquainted with computers were probably the ones being told not to be afraid to restart their device or reinstall the software. The difficulty is relative to the time period and what is going on in it. Now everyone thinks they are a computer expert because they can follow easy tutorials that are everywhere. Imagine having to do things without tutorials and with crapy hardware and buggy unintuitive software that is made for super geeks entertainment.
Graph paper is a concept from far before MMORPGS... perhaps before your time.
I've been around since the late 70s, but kids growing up at the time in my area didn't seem very interested in things like graph paper, line drawing, and in general creating maps. They were often interested in sports and video games, and TV shows (I know I was). Those who were interested were usually the super geeky kids who were in honors classes. At any rate, it wasn't as easy to gain access to knowledge about how to do things as it is today with all the videos available. In those days you would have to go to the library and read a book and most kids didn't have the attention span or just didn't learn well from books.
A few in-development mmos will be released within the next few years with the promise higher difficulty gameplay. They seem to have a following mainly because of this feature.
What would happen if all the latest ( modern) mmos raised difficulty to a far greater level ?
For me this would simply encourage community, and make abilities count...... WoW, what a feature
I don't care about difficulty, I care about engaging, interesting, involving.
Sure good movies present a challenge. Ever wonder why most movies are not as enjoyable on the next viewing? Because you already know what they contain. And the movies that do have high rewatch value are ones that you see things you missed the first time.
Same reason why you roll your eyes and get bored super fast when a movie is nothing but trite sayings and stereotypical tropes.
We want the media we consume to cause us to think about things in a different way. Teach us something we didn't know before. Push us to limits we haven't crossed before. Maybe by interesting plot twists that make us think. Maybe by massive special effects that are a shock to our senses. Anything that doesn't do these things is what we refer to as "stale" or "boring".
But the ideal challenge for us is a challenge that is hard enough to push our boundaries, but not so ridiculous we get nothing from it. That's why most of us would rather play Starcraft 2 than QWOP.
And how much we want our boundaries pushed varies from person to person. Which boundaries we want pushed varies from person to person. But if you didn't want your boundaries pushed AKA to be challenged, you wouldn't be playing games. Hell, you wouldn't even be a part of the human experience.
You and I have a very different understanding of the concept of challenge then.
Constantine, The Console Poster
"One of the most difficult tasks men can perform, however much others may despise it, is the invention of good games and it cannot be done by men out of touch with their instinctive selves." - Carl Jung
Challenging is anything that tests your abilities. So that could be a pong match challenging your reflexes, it could be a movie like "The Ring" testing your tolerance for fear, or it could be a series like Wheel of Time challenging your thought process by making you see a foreign world through different perspectives and consider what you would do in the shoes of the character (Or just pressing your limits of how many plot lines you can follow at once.)
Let me ask you a question. How many times do you watch the movie that you really enjoy and not sit there and put yourself in the character's shoes and think of how you might of reacted differently were you in their position? What you could have done to avoid negative plot points or achieve better outcomes?
I'd say I do that 100% of the time unless the movie was just utter trash. Even then somtimes. Like I said earlier. If you are thinking about it afterwards it was mentally challenging to you.
Comments
Aloha Mr Hand !
Beating a boss the first time can be hard but doing it after that gets easier and easier as you learn it's moves and since MMOs are a lot about repeating the same endgame content over and over that isn't good.
A better Ai and more randomness forcing you to think on the spot would make the long term fun far better. And the randomness need to be enough to make any research at least rather hard, just having 3 variants of the same boss ain't good enough.
The you of course need to figure out how difficult each boss should be to maximize the fun, having tons of close to impossible bosses isn't fun either just like having tons of bosses that just die no matter how poorly you play isn't.
Some bosses do need to be easier then others and the amount of harder needs to go up as you progress in the game. You don't put up a legendary hero against a goblin mystic more then you put a peasant who just decided to become an adventurer against an ancient dragon or lich.
A good MMO have varied difficulty but starting out with generaly easy content and slowly ramp the difficulty up as you progress but with some exceptions in both directions.
Certainly glad the graph paper days are over.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I think they traded difficulty for grind, the difficulty became on many the time it takes instead of your skill at it, this on the usual open-world PvE.
Whether or not this is difficult or not is arguable, but I know most people in the days of EQ could not make maps or just didn't have a clue how to. This type of information was not as easily available as most information is today. Most people were still going on here say in the 90s. Not many people knew what the internet was. If you could use it, navigate it, download, install software, etc. you were far ahead of the game. I think most of the people here that are now acquainted with computers were probably the ones being told not to be afraid to restart their device or reinstall the software. The difficulty is relative to the time period and what is going on in it. Now everyone thinks they are a computer expert because they can follow easy tutorials that are everywhere. Imagine having to do things without tutorials and with crapy hardware and buggy unintuitive software that is made for super geeks entertainment.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Like you just said most people are leaving for MOBAs or Online Shooters. Games based on competition with other players (An inherently challenge mode) where you don't even have stat gap to protect you if you suck.
"Easy" games are suffering. Challenging games are consuming their player base. Thanks for backing up my point.
Challenge in MMOs however has always come down to...
For PvE-
"get 20+ people into a raid group! be a lemming and follow the leader, listen to what he says like a good little lemming and stay out of the fire"
PvP is probably more challenging, but for MMOs has always come down to-
-Zerg the enemy
-Overpower the enemy with OP items/skills.
-Gank that little level 1 or low skilled noob over and over to make him quit the game
MMOs have never once at all been challenging. Planetside 2 is probably the only challenging MMO because it relies on pure skill, not overpowered characters or/and items. EVE gets really close too to being actually challenging. But both end up with zergs winning against any small group player
If you want true challenge and skill, MMOs are NOT the genre to be in. Play MOBAs like league of legends or heroes of the storm...true challenging games that rely on teamwork, no overpowered characters and you can't gank a level 1 over and over.
Otherwise, there is no challenge in being level 110 ganking low levels or maxed skilled or having overpowered items, and there is definitely no challenge in being in a zerg. Nor is there a challenge in being a little lemming in raid content.
However, both those statements change if you are the leader of a raid or leader of a PvP group. That is true challenge, and actually a lot of fun too if that is what your into.
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
That would be true fun. Though I'd like to see it balanced that a level 1 could still kill a max level in 2-3 hits otherwise it just becomes a gankfest of PvPers wanting to kill their own MMO by driving out newbies to the game.
If even a level 1 could kill a max level, that would be a true challenge and skillful game. It be like a FPS in many ways. Very different than most MMOs that have no challenge when you have overpowered items/skills/levels. PvPers in the MMO genre aren't true PvPers like you see in MOBAs, most of them just want to gank newbies and kill their MMO by driving away players. They don't really want a true PvP experience.
In fact PvPers are bigger carebears in MMOs than even PvErs or RPers. Any time something happens that effects them they whine harder than any PvEr ever does lol. And take away their overpoweredness and they whine even harder still. They don't want a challenging atmosphere, they just want to gank level 1s.
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
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Now I never mind when someone plays badly, I do mind bad attitudes and I know it is hard to believe because I am such a lovely creature but I am not that pretty around the things I have no tolerance for.
I did my share of raiding with world's top guilds and I was a recruitment officer for one of them. It took a lot out of me to have a functional roster. And I realized I don't want to have children--period.
Not that I am against combat, but rather I think its time for ideas to move away from that being a central focused for nearly literally all games.
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
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I guess I should have ignored the raid idea and went with a challenging PvP game that is like Dark Souls. Not as much on the PvE side, but more on the PvP side. Sure the PvE raiders wouldn't like it and wouldn't play if it was PvP focused...but its best to focus either on PvE or PvP anyway or you piss both groups off.
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
Anyone who says "I don't play games for challenge" doesn't understand why they play games.
Have you ever played a game and then afterwards you're thinking about aspects of that game? Considering unit combos and counters to certain strategies in an RTS? Thinking over your build in an RPG? Considering a puzzle you had trouble with in a Zelda or Myst game?
That's a form of challenge. You don't find yourself thinking about mowing the lawn the same way after the task is done because it wasn't a mentally challenging task. Good games are.
You play games for challenge whether you realize it or not.
I tired of difficult twitch gameplay in the original XBox era, so i require difficulty in slow/turn-based games; strategy, luck, coordination, and determination etc.
EQ, FFXI, etc.
so he needs to know thy self indeed!
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There are games that give me no challenge, and I go through them like I go through a book or a movie. Unless you consider watching a movie challenging. And no, you can't say if a game isn't challenging then it is not good.
You can argue that challenging might increase the fun factor, but then again, it can also decrease it. For example, many of my friends quit Bloodborne because it was too hard for them. They didn't enjoy it. And of them holds a World Q3A title--he used to love challenges, but not anymore. He just wants games on easy mode now. He liked the story and lore of Bloodborne so much that he couldn't just let go, so he watched a ~50hr playthrough on YouTube instead, and to this day he wished that game was easier so he could play it.
Same reason why you roll your eyes and get bored super fast when a movie is nothing but trite sayings and stereotypical tropes.
We want the media we consume to cause us to think about things in a different way. Teach us something we didn't know before. Push us to limits we haven't crossed before. Maybe by interesting plot twists that make us think. Maybe by massive special effects that are a shock to our senses. Anything that doesn't do these things is what we refer to as "stale" or "boring".
But the ideal challenge for us is a challenge that is hard enough to push our boundaries, but not so ridiculous we get nothing from it. That's why most of us would rather play Starcraft 2 than QWOP.
And how much we want our boundaries pushed varies from person to person. Which boundaries we want pushed varies from person to person. But if you didn't want your boundaries pushed AKA to be challenged, you wouldn't be playing games. Hell, you wouldn't even be a part of the human experience.
Challenging is anything that tests your abilities. So that could be a pong match challenging your reflexes, it could be a movie like "The Ring" testing your tolerance for fear, or it could be a series like Wheel of Time challenging your thought process by making you see a foreign world through different perspectives and consider what you would do in the shoes of the character (Or just pressing your limits of how many plot lines you can follow at once.)
Let me ask you a question. How many times do you watch the movie that you really enjoy and not sit there and put yourself in the character's shoes and think of how you might of reacted differently were you in their position? What you could have done to avoid negative plot points or achieve better outcomes?
I'd say I do that 100% of the time unless the movie was just utter trash. Even then somtimes. Like I said earlier. If you are thinking about it afterwards it was mentally challenging to you.
As long as I'm being stimulated.