I don't want hard combat, I want smart combat. I should be able to either take 15 minutes slowly chipping away at a monster's health, or kill it in one hit with a strategic attack
Funny how these "smart" situations often turn out to be another way to say let's to this fast.
With skill comes (or should come) speed.
I was very speedy when I was young. At 56 I am much slower. Heck, I could see a slower speed starting in my 30s. Things like reading glasses don't help. If you want twitchy, then expect the kiddies.
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what
it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience
because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in
the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you
playing an MMORPG?"
I don't want hard combat, I want smart combat. I should be able to either take 15 minutes slowly chipping away at a monster's health, or kill it in one hit with a strategic attack
Funny how these "smart" situations often turn out to be another way to say let's to this fast.
With skill comes (or should come) speed.
I was very speedy when I was young. At 56 I am much slower. Heck, I could see a slower speed starting in my 30s. Things like reading glasses don't help. If you want twitchy, then expect the kiddies.
With age does not necessarily come skill, though. When two people that are the same age perform the same task, the one that has more skill relevant to the task at hand will accomplish the task faster nearly every time. Furthermore, you are forgetting that aside from CoE, which is still far from release, no moderately popular MMORPG has included meaningful character aging (at least no MMORPG that I've ever played played or heard about).
I don't want hard combat, I want smart combat. I should be able to either take 15 minutes slowly chipping away at a monster's health, or kill it in one hit with a strategic attack
Funny how these "smart" situations often turn out to be another way to say let's to this fast.
With skill comes (or should come) speed.
I was very speedy when I was young. At 56 I am much slower. Heck, I could see a slower speed starting in my 30s. Things like reading glasses don't help. If you want twitchy, then expect the kiddies.
With age does not necessarily come skill, though. When two people that are the same age perform the same task, the one that has more skill relevant to the task at hand will accomplish the task faster nearly every time. Furthermore, you are forgetting that aside from CoE, which is still far from release, no moderately popular MMORPG has included meaningful character aging (at least no MMORPG that I've ever played played or heard about).
Didn't forget it at all and don't tell me what I fucking forgot. Character aging, I am talking about speed of fingers. Even coordination. Perhaps you don't understand that.
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what
it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience
because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in
the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you
playing an MMORPG?"
I don't find hard combat to be fun, as you have mentioned, I try to avoid stress and frustration while playing game. Occasionally hard content, sure, but if I have to go through it for long period of time, I would get burn out very quickly. I very much prefer chillaxing in MMO than being high on adrenaline rush all the time. I can get that from PvP focus games, which I often avoid.
Also, with PvE, even if it's hard, once you know the trick after combat the NPC for multiple times, it no longer hard or challenging anymore.
I could appreciate the players that like to avoid stressful mmos. But two things I can say:
- All mmos are made easy, even the classics turned easy. Theirs like maybe two exceptions total.
There is no longer something for everyone.
- Several years ago, mmos were made MUCH larger giving players a choice on how to play.
A good example, Several of my friends are playing Vanilla WoW, and one loves the game but suffers from high stress, She loves to craft and spends extremely large amounts of time making high level stuff and selling it when the rest of us are not playing as a group.
I don't want hard combat, I want smart combat. I should be able to either take 15 minutes slowly chipping away at a monster's health, or kill it in one hit with a strategic attack
Funny how these "smart" situations often turn out to be another way to say let's to this fast.
With skill comes (or should come) speed.
I was very speedy when I was young. At 56 I am much slower. Heck, I could see a slower speed starting in my 30s. Things like reading glasses don't help. If you want twitchy, then expect the kiddies.
With age does not necessarily come skill, though. When two people that are the same age perform the same task, the one that has more skill relevant to the task at hand will accomplish the task faster nearly every time. Furthermore, you are forgetting that aside from CoE, which is still far from release, no moderately popular MMORPG has included meaningful character aging (at least no MMORPG that I've ever played played or heard about).
Didn't forget it at all and don't tell me what I fucking forgot. Character aging, I am talking about speed of fingers. Even coordination. Perhaps you don't understand that.
Alright, no need to get irate, I think I see where the misunderstanding occurred. I said 'with skill comes (or should come) speed', referencing the real-life phenomenon of completing a task progressively faster with repetition (which happens at all ages). You then said that you have experienced a significant decrease in speed during your real-life aging, which I took to mean that you think characters in MMORPGs should accomplish tasks slower with age. This prompted me to offer a rebuttle of that point, which was that save for CoE, no MMORPGs have meaningful character aging. Knowing now that you meant finger speed/coordination, and seeing that you voted for easy combat (if you were actually disappointed by the poll, you would've voted for what was essentially the abstain option, or you at least should have), I have nothing more to say than that a game with the combat system I described would not be right for you, were it to exist.
What kind of harder though? Like Wildstar had some epic fights, that to this day, the hardest PvE I have seen. That didnt go over with gamers at all. Matter of fact they refused to make things easier as they said. We are making this game for the hardcore gamers. I think it was their number one downfall.
Harder like EQ1? Now thats the harder I want. Where avatars are not bunny hopping around but using each skill tactically. Where if your team mates didnt use the right skill at the right time and if they didnt coordinate their attacks on the right mobs. You were dead. Thats the kinda hard I want to see again.
Depends on the game, if every game had challenging combat lots of players would be without any games to play.
what about difficulty option in every gaem
Single player games already have that feature, for a good reason, but it doesn't translate to MMO's, the best you can hope for is that some classes are easy and others challenging. But having multiple difficulty settings in an MMO, outside of an instanced dungeon at least, would be impractical and probably impossible to implement. Besides, most people i think play for fun, i know for me at least, that is the primary reason, if the difficulty in a game ramps up beyond a certain point, the only thing thats going to happen is that i'll just move on to the next game, i don't define games as being fun by their level of difficulty to play them, that actually ends up in the cons side of a games pros vs cons, probably why i will never play a dark souls game, they just aren't fun to play.
Just wanted to add, difficult, does not mean complex, nor does it mean challenging.
Ok, I'll start off by saying my rants are getting old, and a totally promise to back off.
I spent the last few days on a major campaign to prove mmos are short gimmicks designed to be money fast grabs with no substance.
Many would ask, why is this guy trying to be so irritating and rehashing the same subject ?...We get your point, now stop !
Well, the point is not so much mmos suck anymore. It's that several posters here are promoting that everything is fine !!!.............It's far from it. Hundreds of people are saying they hate what the industry has become, yet the same several posters make an equal amount of post saying " no, all is fine ".
THEY ARE PROMOTING FALSE DATA, AND SAYING IT'S FACTS !
The few are overwhelming the majority, and that's just wrong. They present themselves as professionals but in reality their simply posters that choose to spend a lot of time here. Just like you and I. They present this feeling of having inside tips and above everyone else and are here to give insight and updates...But still the fact is, their self proclaimed. Self appointed professionals !
Here is their clam:
Data shows players like easy fast games, built for casuals.....So this is why we have so many !
This is reality:
Data shows players will play anything, so lets make easy fast, and short crap and market it !
This can easily be proven, just read all the post around these several heavy promoters. People are not happy, far from it...........Everyone is desperately searching for a home, including them.
i want to have 1 shot perma delete character. while mobs i need to hit 100 times just to make the hp go half
The problem is that right now the difficulty is opposite of that, you can win almost any fight without actually bothering learning to play your character.
Impossible to win or impossible to loose, both are terrible. MMOs need to offer something in between the 2 extremes.
Going around killing 20-30 mobs at the same time without even having to think can be charming for about 5 minutes but games do have to offer some challenges or you could just watch TV instead.
I am not saying that all MMOs need to be very hard, some should be easy and other hard but right now the difficulty have dropped beyond easy on almost all MMOs and adding a few hard raids doesn't help either.
Just some years back MMO learned you the benefit of teamwork and to actually learn things as you played, now most of them just learn you that anything you can't complete without any effort isn't worth doing and at least to me that is a terrible lesson.
Some MMOs should be easier, or have easy servers because new MMO players need that to get into the genre. But the genre also need harder games to keep veteran players. Last time this site had an article about how long an average player stayed in a MMO it was just a few weeks and that not counting the people quitting the first few hours. If you had made the same poll in 2005 or earlier it would have been far longer and the thing that have changed most since then is the difficulty.
An easy game will have more players when it releases but it wont keep those players long. Of course if the game is too hard it wont keep them either as you pointed out but there are a lot of good choices in between those extremes.
For me the only meaningful way to increase challenge in gaming is by improving the A.I. in gaming.
The A.I. is much more "challenging" than what's being delivered. There are elements of creature A.I. being held in check, on purpose.
Imagine removal of threat mechanic; and what that would mean to the average healer (and by extension the average tank). A simple way to make combat far more "challenging," at the cost of neutralizing two roles and leaving only area-effect overloaded DPS.
More threatening (challenging) for each individual player. Death comes quickly and much more randomly.
But is it really a better game? Is dying to dice roll randomness your idea of "challenge?"
Do you really want a pack-hunting AI suddenly attacking you when you're most vulnerable (low on mana, low on hp, typing away in your chat box)?
Players need a break from relentless combat from time to time; a truly intelligent AI wound detect the player's reactions slowing as he grows more exhausted, and ramp up accordingly. No heading back to town for you, bucko, not without the graveyard express!
Creature AI could easily "cheat" in any number of ways that players would complain about as unfair. Stunlock, for example. Why wouldn't a creature with the action interruption capability use it all the time? Why aren't there more such creatures? (answer: players haaaaate it)
Why don't creatures travel in enormous chains by default? (players haaaaate it)
Why don't creatures gang-bang the most lightly armored targets, instead of the oaf in full plate? (yup)
Why aren't more creatures fully mobile in three dimensions at very fast speeds? (you guessed it)
---
Count your blessings that the creature design teams never use every trick they have at their fingertips. You would not enjoy it.
My MMO experience isn't particularly wide, but I've never played a "hard" MMO. I've found all of them (from a pve point of view) easy. That said, there are a number of different ways to make an MMO hard:
1) Deep Combat
This is my preferred method of making combat harder, by having a really deep combat system and then making use of it. If players are constantly having to make meaningful choices about what skill to use next then it allows for some really difficult combat. LotRO is the only MMO I've played with deep combat, there were many ways to play each class and (especially for support classes) you were constantly juggling support skills, dps skills and resource management. The deep combat system meant a skilled player was just ridiculously better than an average player. This meant devs could design fights which forced players to make difficult choices.
2) Gear Checks / Levels
This seems to be the most common form of difficulty, but its an illusion. Devs design fights where a certain amount of dps / mitigation / whatever is required and it can only be achieved once you reach a certain gear level. This is embodied by enrage timers.
Thing is, its not actually difficult. The way you actually play the game doesn't change, you simply just need a certain level of gear before being able to beat the boss. Before that gear level, no amount of skill will allow you to beat the boss, but after that gear level you can.
This method of "difficulty" is my most hated. Its not actually difficult so I'm still bored, I'm just forced to jump through a few hoops before being able to complete the content. SW:TOR is full of this: each boss was mind-numbingly easy, you just needed a certain gear level and a basic rotation and you'd win.
3) Punishing Mistakes
Some MMOs I've played add difficulty by punishing mistakes. The combat itself isn't necessarily hard, but the difficulty is added by forcing players to be consistent (i.e. can you keep up 100% concentration for the whole fight?). Sort of things I'm thinking is if you miss an interrupt, boss gets off a mega-hit that kills half the raid. Or not removing a debuff which kills after 10s.
4) Tactics
This is my second favourite method of adding difficulty - via having complicated tactics that you are required to learn before being able to beat the content. Multiple phases, special attacks, aggro mechanics, special adds etc.....all takes a while to learn what is happening, develop strategies to overcome it, then being able to execute those tactics. Of course, once you've learned the tactics and how to execute them, the difficulty drops away
5) Group Co-ordination
Otherwise known as the ability to carry other people. Most MMOs I've played, you can carry other people through the difficult content, either because you have enough dps / heading to meet enrage timers or because the tactics can be executed by a small amount of people.
However, some games place great emphasis on group co-ordination, requiring every single member of the group to know all the tactics and be able to execute their own part perfectly. If a single person misses their part, gets the timing wrong or whatever then you fail. This is sort of the same as punishing mistakes but on a group level, so the extra challenge comes from communication techniques, leadership skills etc.
My preferred way of making a game hard is through deep combat and complex tactics. Making the players make tough decisions during combat whilst providing a nice learning curve via tactics is the best for me. It means a dumb player will never be able to beat the content, but a skilled player or group will. In group combat, the deep combat and tactics still mean its challenging, but I do admittedly like to be able to carry a few people through raids if I can (because mmos are social, I like to be able to help guildies out if I can). LotRO is the only game that has taken this approach that I've played, but it has long since been dumbed down so that even though the combat is deep, the content doesn't make use of that depth.
My least favourite method is gear checks and punishing mistakes. SW:TOR was this way for a long time. The best players on the server would be unable to complete content without the right gear, which is downright stupid. The game was so damn simple (usually 5-8 skill rotation with minor movement) but if you didn't have the right gear, you'd could produce the DPS and so you'd hit enrage timers and fail. But, 1 week later with a gear upgrade, you'd produce the DPS and win easily, despite the fact you were playing the game exactly the same.
Currently Playing: WAR RoR - Spitt rr7X Black Orc | Scrotling rr6X Squig Herder | Scabrous rr4X Shaman
I think challenge depends entirely on the player. Some people prefer twitch based combat and think that it is super challenging and fun, with dodging and things like that. Other players prefer the challenge of reacting to enemies attacks with counter spells and buffs and debuffs while the other people might absolutely hate that and call it not challenging. Other players just don't even want an incredible challenge and just want to live in a world that isn't their own, while doing menial tasks.
I find I enjoy PvP simply because other players provide a challenge for me to fight against in any game, whether it be twitch based, or tab target spell based.
AI in games can't really support insane depth with how they react, so it's usually a set pattern of reactions based on triggers in combat like certain health %. If they could make a game that had prediction in combat or reaction based on player input, then I think no matter how the combat is implemented, then it will be challenging. But some people don't even want a hard game.
There are people who enjoy the masochism of Demons Souls and Dark souls, but there are others who avoid that game like the plague. If an MMO had systems like that I feel the population would be incredibly split on whether or not it was good.
The Rogue in WoW was the first mmo character I ever played.
I loved the fact that it was easy to play hard to master.
This class had so many variables and styles of play. I remember being told the strongest class in the game was a dual welding sword Rogue. To play this you had to spend points deep into the talent tree to insure you couldn't have two styles.
I insisted on being deep stealth, I forced this style of play to be good. I insisted on mastering it and I did.
Unfortunately the problem was, Stealth didn't help much in groups because the fights were longer in dungeons and once you do your stealthy pop you were just another dps Joe.
Now the Warlock was deep and interesting too....I'll bet you could say the same for your class too !
I believe there should be combat to support both solo and group play. In otherwords there should be areas where mobs are hard enough where you need a group, and areas where it's easy enough to solo/duo.
However, I also think areas where groups are required should be far more rewarding than areas where you would solo.
I agree 100%
The problem is games are extremely small now. The content doesn't support both, therefor you have only "easy".
After all, you now have one quest per level, at higher levels you have two quest per level. I'm exaggerating but not by much.....crap.
This poll really doesn't capture how I see things. I've seen plenty of different combat systems, some good some bad. But I've always been able to find a challenge in my MMOs. Want it hard? Round up more mobs at once.
This poll really doesn't capture how I see things. I've seen plenty of different combat systems, some good some bad. But I've always been able to find a challenge in my MMOs. Want it hard? Round up more mobs at once.
Improvise in childish combat.....That's the answer ?
How about fighting things 10 levels higher, that works too !
This poll really doesn't capture how I see things. I've seen plenty of different combat systems, some good some bad. But I've always been able to find a challenge in my MMOs. Want it hard? Round up more mobs at once.
Probably he keep talking about his level13 experience when everyone is at max level.
I have thousands of game time in wow and not much is spent leveling in the open world, so I never care much about it.
I'm still puzzled what game he actually liked EQ? UO? Eve?SWG?
Comments
I was very speedy when I was young. At 56 I am much slower. Heck, I could see a slower speed starting in my 30s. Things like reading glasses don't help. If you want twitchy, then expect the kiddies.
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
Didn't forget it at all and don't tell me what I fucking forgot. Character aging, I am talking about speed of fingers. Even coordination. Perhaps you don't understand that.
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
I could appreciate the players that like to avoid stressful mmos. But two things I can say:
- All mmos are made easy, even the classics turned easy. Theirs like maybe two exceptions total.
There is no longer something for everyone.
- Several years ago, mmos were made MUCH larger giving players a choice on how to play.
A good example, Several of my friends are playing Vanilla WoW, and one loves the game but suffers from high stress, She loves to craft and spends extremely large amounts of time making high level stuff and selling it when the rest of us are not playing as a group.
Harder like EQ1? Now thats the harder I want. Where avatars are not bunny hopping around but using each skill tactically. Where if your team mates didnt use the right skill at the right time and if they didnt coordinate their attacks on the right mobs. You were dead. Thats the kinda hard I want to see again.
거북이는 목을 내밀 때 안 움직입니다
Besides, most people i think play for fun, i know for me at least, that is the primary reason, if the difficulty in a game ramps up beyond a certain point, the only thing thats going to happen is that i'll just move on to the next game, i don't define games as being fun by their level of difficulty to play them, that actually ends up in the cons side of a games pros vs cons, probably why i will never play a dark souls game, they just aren't fun to play.
Just wanted to add, difficult, does not mean complex, nor does it mean challenging.
Ok, I'll start off by saying my rants are getting old, and a totally promise to back off.
I spent the last few days on a major campaign to prove mmos are short gimmicks designed to be money fast grabs with no substance.
Many would ask, why is this guy trying to be so irritating and rehashing the same subject ?...We get your point, now stop !
Well, the point is not so much mmos suck anymore. It's that several posters here are promoting that everything is fine !!!.............It's far from it. Hundreds of people are saying they hate what the industry has become, yet the same several posters make an equal amount of post saying " no, all is fine ".
THEY ARE PROMOTING FALSE DATA, AND SAYING IT'S FACTS !
The few are overwhelming the majority, and that's just wrong. They present themselves as professionals but in reality their simply posters that choose to spend a lot of time here. Just like you and I. They present this feeling of having inside tips and above everyone else and are here to give insight and updates...But still the fact is, their self proclaimed. Self appointed professionals !
Here is their clam:
Data shows players like easy fast games, built for casuals.....So this is why we have so many !
This is reality:
Data shows players will play anything, so lets make easy fast, and short crap and market it !
This can easily be proven, just read all the post around these several heavy promoters. People are not happy, far from it...........Everyone is desperately searching for a home, including them.
Anyway lets analyze the findings
........................................................................................................................................
48% say they don't like easy..12 posters
20% say they like easy..5 posters
In reality, this would be 14 to 3 as two openly stated they'll vote against to sabotage the findings.
That coincide with your finding. Those 10 person actually like how mmorpg is right now.
Face it, there are actaully people enjoying wow, gw2, FF14, TESO, etc etc.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I guess what you are trying to say is you are the majority?
Impossible to win or impossible to loose, both are terrible. MMOs need to offer something in between the 2 extremes.
Going around killing 20-30 mobs at the same time without even having to think can be charming for about 5 minutes but games do have to offer some challenges or you could just watch TV instead.
I am not saying that all MMOs need to be very hard, some should be easy and other hard but right now the difficulty have dropped beyond easy on almost all MMOs and adding a few hard raids doesn't help either.
Just some years back MMO learned you the benefit of teamwork and to actually learn things as you played, now most of them just learn you that anything you can't complete without any effort isn't worth doing and at least to me that is a terrible lesson.
Some MMOs should be easier, or have easy servers because new MMO players need that to get into the genre. But the genre also need harder games to keep veteran players. Last time this site had an article about how long an average player stayed in a MMO it was just a few weeks and that not counting the people quitting the first few hours. If you had made the same poll in 2005 or earlier it would have been far longer and the thing that have changed most since then is the difficulty.
An easy game will have more players when it releases but it wont keep those players long. Of course if the game is too hard it wont keep them either as you pointed out but there are a lot of good choices in between those extremes.
Imagine removal of threat mechanic; and what that would mean to the average healer (and by extension the average tank). A simple way to make combat far more "challenging," at the cost of neutralizing two roles and leaving only area-effect overloaded DPS.
More threatening (challenging) for each individual player. Death comes quickly and much more randomly.
But is it really a better game? Is dying to dice roll randomness your idea of "challenge?"
Do you really want a pack-hunting AI suddenly attacking you when you're most vulnerable (low on mana, low on hp, typing away in your chat box)?
Players need a break from relentless combat from time to time; a truly intelligent AI wound detect the player's reactions slowing as he grows more exhausted, and ramp up accordingly. No heading back to town for you, bucko, not without the graveyard express!
Creature AI could easily "cheat" in any number of ways that players would complain about as unfair. Stunlock, for example. Why wouldn't a creature with the action interruption capability use it all the time? Why aren't there more such creatures? (answer: players haaaaate it)
Why don't creatures travel in enormous chains by default? (players haaaaate it)
Why don't creatures gang-bang the most lightly armored targets, instead of the oaf in full plate? (yup)
Why aren't more creatures fully mobile in three dimensions at very fast speeds? (you guessed it)
---
Count your blessings that the creature design teams never use every trick they have at their fingertips. You would not enjoy it.
1) Deep Combat
This is my preferred method of making combat harder, by having a really deep combat system and then making use of it. If players are constantly having to make meaningful choices about what skill to use next then it allows for some really difficult combat. LotRO is the only MMO I've played with deep combat, there were many ways to play each class and (especially for support classes) you were constantly juggling support skills, dps skills and resource management. The deep combat system meant a skilled player was just ridiculously better than an average player. This meant devs could design fights which forced players to make difficult choices.
2) Gear Checks / Levels
This seems to be the most common form of difficulty, but its an illusion. Devs design fights where a certain amount of dps / mitigation / whatever is required and it can only be achieved once you reach a certain gear level. This is embodied by enrage timers.
Thing is, its not actually difficult. The way you actually play the game doesn't change, you simply just need a certain level of gear before being able to beat the boss. Before that gear level, no amount of skill will allow you to beat the boss, but after that gear level you can.
This method of "difficulty" is my most hated. Its not actually difficult so I'm still bored, I'm just forced to jump through a few hoops before being able to complete the content. SW:TOR is full of this: each boss was mind-numbingly easy, you just needed a certain gear level and a basic rotation and you'd win.
3) Punishing Mistakes
Some MMOs I've played add difficulty by punishing mistakes. The combat itself isn't necessarily hard, but the difficulty is added by forcing players to be consistent (i.e. can you keep up 100% concentration for the whole fight?). Sort of things I'm thinking is if you miss an interrupt, boss gets off a mega-hit that kills half the raid. Or not removing a debuff which kills after 10s.
4) Tactics
This is my second favourite method of adding difficulty - via having complicated tactics that you are required to learn before being able to beat the content. Multiple phases, special attacks, aggro mechanics, special adds etc.....all takes a while to learn what is happening, develop strategies to overcome it, then being able to execute those tactics. Of course, once you've learned the tactics and how to execute them, the difficulty drops away
5) Group Co-ordination
Otherwise known as the ability to carry other people. Most MMOs I've played, you can carry other people through the difficult content, either because you have enough dps / heading to meet enrage timers or because the tactics can be executed by a small amount of people.
However, some games place great emphasis on group co-ordination, requiring every single member of the group to know all the tactics and be able to execute their own part perfectly. If a single person misses their part, gets the timing wrong or whatever then you fail. This is sort of the same as punishing mistakes but on a group level, so the extra challenge comes from communication techniques, leadership skills etc.
My preferred way of making a game hard is through deep combat and complex tactics. Making the players make tough decisions during combat whilst providing a nice learning curve via tactics is the best for me. It means a dumb player will never be able to beat the content, but a skilled player or group will. In group combat, the deep combat and tactics still mean its challenging, but I do admittedly like to be able to carry a few people through raids if I can (because mmos are social, I like to be able to help guildies out if I can). LotRO is the only game that has taken this approach that I've played, but it has long since been dumbed down so that even though the combat is deep, the content doesn't make use of that depth.
My least favourite method is gear checks and punishing mistakes. SW:TOR was this way for a long time. The best players on the server would be unable to complete content without the right gear, which is downright stupid. The game was so damn simple (usually 5-8 skill rotation with minor movement) but if you didn't have the right gear, you'd could produce the DPS and so you'd hit enrage timers and fail. But, 1 week later with a gear upgrade, you'd produce the DPS and win easily, despite the fact you were playing the game exactly the same.
I find I enjoy PvP simply because other players provide a challenge for me to fight against in any game, whether it be twitch based, or tab target spell based.
AI in games can't really support insane depth with how they react, so it's usually a set pattern of reactions based on triggers in combat like certain health %. If they could make a game that had prediction in combat or reaction based on player input, then I think no matter how the combat is implemented, then it will be challenging. But some people don't even want a hard game.
There are people who enjoy the masochism of Demons Souls and Dark souls, but there are others who avoid that game like the plague. If an MMO had systems like that I feel the population would be incredibly split on whether or not it was good.
The Rogue in WoW was the first mmo character I ever played.
I loved the fact that it was easy to play hard to master.
This class had so many variables and styles of play. I remember being told the strongest class in the game was a dual welding sword Rogue. To play this you had to spend points deep into the talent tree to insure you couldn't have two styles.
I insisted on being deep stealth, I forced this style of play to be good. I insisted on mastering it and I did.
Unfortunately the problem was, Stealth didn't help much in groups because the fights were longer in dungeons and once you do your stealthy pop you were just another dps Joe.
Now the Warlock was deep and interesting too....I'll bet you could say the same for your class too !
In other games, I loved Vanguards Disciple.
The key word here is choices !
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As I stated, in newer easy, get them out the door mmos....
All you have to do is press 1, if it still lived press 1. Now if your up against a real hard bandit you would press 1 then 2 real fast.
I agree 100%
The problem is games are extremely small now. The content doesn't support both, therefor you have only "easy".
After all, you now have one quest per level, at higher levels you have two quest per level. I'm exaggerating but not by much.....crap.
Improvise in childish combat.....That's the answer ?
How about fighting things 10 levels higher, that works too !
I have thousands of game time in wow and not much is spent leveling in the open world, so I never care much about it.
I'm still puzzled what game he actually liked EQ? UO? Eve?SWG?
Or if he never liked any mmorpg