I'm against death penalties that cause you to reset to the beginning of a long sequence because I don't like having to redo content that I already did over and over again. I mean, if I slog though 8 rooms of easy mobs and then die to the boss, why should I have to slog through those rooms again? It's just a pointless timesink put into games by devs trying to extend the life of their game and it's clearly bad design. Going through the dungeon again after you die is not necessary to the gaming experience, so it should be removed.
In conclusion, I completely disagree with everything I wrote above. I was just writing it to demonstrate that this is the exact kind of argument you have been using against everything in this thread. I really don't see how having to go through a dungeon again is "better" than having to earn back exp loss on death or having to find your corpse. You could levy the exact same argument against redoing a dungeon as you have against all other death penalties.
Well it's bad design for those 8 rooms of mobs to be substantially easier than the boss itself. The entire sequence should fit a certain level of challenge (albeit with a pacing with peaks and valleys, where some parts give the player some breathing room and others are at the height of challenge.)
But the big difference between the above argument and mine is that the argument above involves gameplay, whereas bad death penalties eat up time without any gameplay at all.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I'm against death penalties that cause you to reset to the beginning of a long sequence because I don't like having to redo content that I already did over and over again. I mean, if I slog though 8 rooms of easy mobs and then die to the boss, why should I have to slog through those rooms again? It's just a pointless timesink put into games by devs trying to extend the life of their game and it's clearly bad design. Going through the dungeon again after you die is not necessary to the gaming experience, so it should be removed.
In conclusion, I completely disagree with everything I wrote above. I was just writing it to demonstrate that this is the exact kind of argument you have been using against everything in this thread. I really don't see how having to go through a dungeon again is "better" than having to earn back exp loss on death or having to find your corpse. You could levy the exact same argument against redoing a dungeon as you have against all other death penalties.
Well it's bad design for those 8 rooms of mobs to be substantially easier than the boss itself. The entire sequence should fit a certain level of challenge (albeit with a pacing with peaks and valleys, where some parts give the player some breathing room and others are at the height of challenge.)
But the big difference between the above argument and mine is that the argument above involves gameplay, whereas bad death penalties eat up time without any gameplay at all.
How is killing mobs to earn back exp after dying and suffering exp loss not "gameplay?"
How is desperately running to your corpse before time runs out not "gameplay?"
The only death penalties that would meet what you describe are things like "rez sickness" where you literally can't do anything or you will die until it wears off. And I would agree that this is bad. I was never a fan of having to AFK for 10 minutes after I die while I wait for rez sickness to wear off.
I just read this but Im not sure if you guys played this Prince of Persia game...
Yknoe the one where you CANT die no matter how hard you try?
Except for falling damage and traps? And I didn't get past my clone in... was it level 12 or 13. Actually I don't recall being invulnerable in that game, no. Those guards did kill me from time to time, but there was a cheat code, I think...
I think they were referring to Sands of Time and the later sequels, where when you die, you can use the dagger to reverse time and correct your mistake.
How that makes it any more impossible to die than savegames is beyond me, so the point seems a bit weak, IMO. Especially since you can no longer do it when you run out of sand.
Braid is a better example. In Braid, you CANNOT die, because when you "die" you just rewind time until you are alive again .
I also think Braid was a wonderful game that demonstrates a different kind of game design, and it is indeed difficult because, even lacking any death penalty, the puzzles require a lot of lateral thinking to succeed. And that's part of my point, difficulty can't be "pinned down" so that a game must have certain features or attributes to be difficult. You really have to consider the ENTIRE game to judge its difficulty, and not just so "oh, no death penalty, must be easy."
On the same token though, a death penalty is vital to the difficulty and challenge of certain games like Dark Souls. It really all depends on the game. Some can really benefit from a harsh death penalty, others do not.
Death penalties do not make things difficult. They change the games tactical considerations.
When you go from Diablo 2 normal to hardcore the significance of abilities that get you out of bad situations radically change. They go from "meh" to absolutely essential. The gameplay itself is not harder. There is simply the changed character of tactical retreats going from fairly important to completely essential. Similarly in some games huge penalties may also affect how important it is to be very careful not to attract the wrong attention.
People think that because they are crying that they lost an awesome character that they were challenged. This is wrong. If I walk by you and punch in the gut and you roll around on the ground puking that wasn't a challenge for me or you.
However if random people are walking around assaulting people it will change your behavior. You may start sitting with your back to a wall so you can see everyone coming. You might start carrying a large stick.
The difficulty starts to come in when you actually start to do something about it when someone does assault you.
I'm against death penalties that cause you to reset to the beginning of a long sequence because I don't like having to redo content that I already did over and over again. I mean, if I slog though 8 rooms of easy mobs and then die to the boss, why should I have to slog through those rooms again? It's just a pointless timesink put into games by devs trying to extend the life of their game and it's clearly bad design. Going through the dungeon again after you die is not necessary to the gaming experience, so it should be removed.
In conclusion, I completely disagree with everything I wrote above. I was just writing it to demonstrate that this is the exact kind of argument you have been using against everything in this thread. I really don't see how having to go through a dungeon again is "better" than having to earn back exp loss on death or having to find your corpse. You could levy the exact same argument against redoing a dungeon as you have against all other death penalties.
Well it's bad design for those 8 rooms of mobs to be substantially easier than the boss itself. The entire sequence should fit a certain level of challenge (albeit with a pacing with peaks and valleys, where some parts give the player some breathing room and others are at the height of challenge.)
But the big difference between the above argument and mine is that the argument above involves gameplay, whereas bad death penalties eat up time without any gameplay at all.
How is killing mobs to earn back exp after dying and suffering exp loss not "gameplay?"
How is desperately running to your corpse before time runs out not "gameplay?"
The only death penalties that would meet what you describe are things like "rez sickness" where you literally can't do anything or you will die until it wears off. And I would agree that this is bad. I was never a fan of having to AFK for 10 minutes after I die while I wait for rez sickness to wear off.
I think the point that he is trying to get across is why should he "re-accomplish" something?
You mess up. Now you are even less able to do the task. So now you have to go do the same thing in safer place just to have another chance?
This makes little sense.
I agree that these 10 minute debuffs are no better really.
But I think both systems are stupid. If I just failed a challenge why are you making me less able to do it? Its nonsense.
Even perma-death makes more sense. At least in Rouge-likes or diablo hardcore what have you. The death means you have to try to win all over again.
The old MUD/EQ/Lineage2 way of XP loss is completely backwards. Its like amputating a wrestler's arm or a sprinters leg when they lose.
"Well you lost, looks like we have to take your arm"
"But how am I going to wrestle with out my arm."
"Look you won't learn if we don't cripple you."
"What?!"
"Look its quite simple I am not sure why you are whining. You can find a way to win. After all I have seen a guy with no legs win wrestling matches."
"So you are saying a guy with no legs has the same chance of winning?"
"Well, no, not exactly but I mean he could possibly win. I mean I have seen it happen. Now come on stop crying we have to chop off your arm."
"Fuck you, you take my arm I am taking you with me."
That is the XP loss death penalty reasoning in a nutshell.
Why are you in such a hurry. Where do you stop increasing speed / ease. Godmode?
What part of a fight reset makes you think godmode?
Fights should be challenging. Failing the challenge resets the fight. It's the simplest and best form of death penalty and has been used in video games since their inception.
You're confusing resetting the fight with resetting the game. What you mention is more akin to perma-death.
For the first 20 years of gaming, if you lost, you had to start over from the start, not from just before where you lost...and in those days it would even cost you another quarter to try again.
This whole "lets pretend that didn't even happen" mentality when you die is a relatively recent development.
Braid is a better example. In Braid, you CANNOT die, because when you "die" you just rewind time until you are alive again .
I also think Braid was a wonderful game that demonstrates a different kind of game design, and it is indeed difficult because, even lacking any death penalty, the puzzles require a lot of lateral thinking to succeed. And that's part of my point, difficulty can't be "pinned down" so that a game must have certain features or attributes to be difficult. You really have to consider the ENTIRE game to judge its difficulty, and not just so "oh, no death penalty, must be easy."
On the same token though, a death penalty is vital to the difficulty and challenge of certain games like Dark Souls. It really all depends on the game. Some can really benefit from a harsh death penalty, others do not.
Death penalties do not make things difficult. They change the games tactical considerations.
When you go from Diablo 2 normal to hardcore the significance of abilities that get you out of bad situations radically change. They go from "meh" to absolutely essential. The gameplay itself is not harder. There is simply the changed character of tactical retreats going from fairly important to completely essential. Similarly in some games huge penalties may also affect how important it is to be very careful not to attract the wrong attention.
People think that because they are crying that they lost an awesome character that they were challenged. This is wrong. If I walk by you and punch in the gut and you roll around on the ground puking that wasn't a challenge for me or you.
However if random people are walking around assaulting people it will change your behavior. You may start sitting with your back to a wall so you can see everyone coming. You might start carrying a large stick.
The difficulty starts to come in when you actually start to do something about it when someone does assault you.
When you talk about the difficulty of a game it really all depends on how you define "the game." In your Diablo 2 example, if you define the game as killing monsters and exploring dungeons...then no, hardcore mode does not make that more difficult.
BUT, if you define the game as "trying to kill the last boss (Mephisto?)" then hardcore mode, DEFINITELY makes the game more difficult. It goes from "kill Mephisto, you can die as many times as you like" to "kill Mephisto, if you die, you start over from the beginning."
Personally, I think the latter is a better definition. It better encapsulates the game as an entire experience rather than just look at specific parts of the game.
Why are you in such a hurry. Where do you stop increasing speed / ease. Godmode?
What part of a fight reset makes you think godmode?
Fights should be challenging. Failing the challenge resets the fight. It's the simplest and best form of death penalty and has been used in video games since their inception.
You're confusing resetting the fight with resetting the game. What you mention is more akin to perma-death.
For the first 20 years of gaming, if you lost, you had to start over from the start, not from just before where you lost...and in those days it would even cost you another quarter to try again.
This whole "lets pretend that didn't even happen" mentality when you die is a relatively recent development.
I was thinking the same thing. Unfortunately in an rpg you can't completely reset the game like in old school Contra or Ghosts n Goblins.
Something is wrong in todays paradigm though. You get infinite attempts on any given fight. Losing just means starting the fight over again. Winning gives you all kinds of rewards and money. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own. -- Herman Melville
Something is wrong in todays paradigm though. You get infinite attempts on any given fight. Losing just means starting the fight over again. Winning gives you all kinds of rewards and money. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
What is wrong with this picture? Games are entertainment products, not training for dealing with life's problem, not a way to toughening up our resolves.
So people re-start losing fights all the time in many genre of gaming. If that entertains, i do not see why not.
How is killing mobs to earn back exp after dying and suffering exp loss not "gameplay?"
How is desperately running to your corpse before time runs out not "gameplay?"
The only death penalties that would meet what you describe are things like "rez sickness" where you literally can't do anything or you will die until it wears off. And I would agree that this is bad. I was never a fan of having to AFK for 10 minutes after I die while I wait for rez sickness to wear off.
Killing mobs is gameplay. The issue is many games involve a certain mandatory downtime in addition to having to kill more mobs. It's not "reset the player immediately, right now, in front of the mob that killed me". It's "spend 5-10 mins running back to my corpse to rez".
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
There is nothing wrong with Time Sinks. Time Sinks can be very enjoyable. I have a friend who races cars on weekends, he literally spends every waking moment working, thinking about or talking about his stupid car, so he can take it once a month and wreck it. He loves it all.
Let's rephrase then. There is nothing wrong with time sink for people like me.
However, they are boring and extremely undesirable in a video game. Thus, you go play the game with lots of time sink and i will go play those with little ones.
Braid is a better example. In Braid, you CANNOT die, because when you "die" you just rewind time until you are alive again .
I also think Braid was a wonderful game that demonstrates a different kind of game design, and it is indeed difficult because, even lacking any death penalty, the puzzles require a lot of lateral thinking to succeed. And that's part of my point, difficulty can't be "pinned down" so that a game must have certain features or attributes to be difficult. You really have to consider the ENTIRE game to judge its difficulty, and not just so "oh, no death penalty, must be easy."
On the same token though, a death penalty is vital to the difficulty and challenge of certain games like Dark Souls. It really all depends on the game. Some can really benefit from a harsh death penalty, others do not.
Death penalties do not make things difficult. They change the games tactical considerations.
When you go from Diablo 2 normal to hardcore the significance of abilities that get you out of bad situations radically change. They go from "meh" to absolutely essential. The gameplay itself is not harder. There is simply the changed character of tactical retreats going from fairly important to completely essential. Similarly in some games huge penalties may also affect how important it is to be very careful not to attract the wrong attention.
People think that because they are crying that they lost an awesome character that they were challenged. This is wrong. If I walk by you and punch in the gut and you roll around on the ground puking that wasn't a challenge for me or you.
However if random people are walking around assaulting people it will change your behavior. You may start sitting with your back to a wall so you can see everyone coming. You might start carrying a large stick.
The difficulty starts to come in when you actually start to do something about it when someone does assault you.
When you talk about the difficulty of a game it really all depends on how you define "the game." In your Diablo 2 example, if you define the game as killing monsters and exploring dungeons...then no, hardcore mode does not make that more difficult.
BUT, if you define the game as "trying to kill the last boss (Mephisto?)" then hardcore mode, DEFINITELY makes the game more difficult. It goes from "kill Mephisto, you can die as many times as you like" to "kill Mephisto, if you die, you start over from the beginning."
Personally, I think the latter is a better definition. It better encapsulates the game as an entire experience rather than just look at specific parts of the game.
Its all a matter time.
In the end if it takes you 4 tries to beat mephisto then that is what it takes. It just takes alot more time in perma-death mode to get those 4 tries.
Preferring the latter basically equates to "winning is what matters". I mean by this point of view everything else could be ridiculously easy and do 1 point of damage while you one shot everything but as long as mephisto is hard then the game is hard. This is of course reducto ad absurdum but that is a valid argumentation technique of disproving something. This case is absurd and fairly obviously so but still consistent with that definition so that definition allows the absrud and is either just wrong or incomplete.
In a perma-death game winning has a completely different meaning. In fact just go to forum about Rogue-likes such as Dugeon Crawl Stone Soup and you will notice immeidately that people have a completely different idea about the game experience. In most roguelike people approach each new game as a totally new experience and do not necessarily even expect to win.
Normal Diablo people expect to win and in fact basically WILL win unless they simply quit. They will always win. When you throw perma-death in you throw that out the window. The entire mentality of the game changes. They will sometimes win and cannot rely on a consistency of character since the game is regenerated each time.
Is a "win" going to be rarer with perma-death. Of course. Always necessarily is more than sometimes. But if the game were easy that sometimes would be like 95% and be pretty close to always. If the game were hard that sometimes would be 10% and pretty darn far off always.
Now you have a certain point in that the 95% vs 10% could be solely determined by the end boss. But should they? No I think that would be a problem. In a game that is made well those death should be spread out all over the place and have a lot of interesting variety one would think. If the vast majority of game ending deaths are at the final boss there is a problem.
I guess one could say that is hard. But I think most people would just call it poorly made.
However I would like to point out that some games use cheap mechanics to force you to win or die like locking you into the room with the boss and any game with perma-death that works this way is crap, in my opinion.
If you make a permadeath game and then prevent people from using tactics to somehow account the extra risk or change the way the game plays just for that boss.
Diablo 2 is not a true roguelike in that it was not designed from the beginning to always have perma-death. perma-death was tacked on to give a rogue-like flavor to those who wanted it. Many abilties are not costed the way they would be in a good rogue-like. In general certain movement and hiding effects in rogue-likes are costed as being much more powerful than in a non-permadeath game.
In games like Moria if you ran into the Balrog when you weren't ready it was possible to run away and there were entire strategies about when and how to avoid the Balrog and eventually beat him when you were ready.
Whereas in say Titan Quest you get locked into the room with the final boss. If it was perma-death (which it is not) that would be crap.
Something is wrong in todays paradigm though. You get infinite attempts on any given fight. Losing just means starting the fight over again. Winning gives you all kinds of rewards and money. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
What is wrong with this picture? Games are entertainment products, not training for dealing with life's problem, not a way to toughening up our resolves.
I said nothing to that affect. Complete red herring.
So people re-start losing fights all the time in many genre of gaming. If that entertains, i do not see why not.
So because everybody else does it that makes it right? I thought games were supposed to be fun as well as challenging.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own. -- Herman Melville
There is nothing wrong either way, having harsh death penalty or having no death penalty.
For some people having harsh death penalty add to the game play, make it more exciting.
But having harsh death penalty also sometime mean people need to do something they don't want to do, so they can do what they want to do.
Lastly no death penalty dont' mean you can have infinite try on a raid boss. The reality is in most raid you really only have a few try on the boss before someone need to call it a night. Out of the few games I played which have raids, alot of the boss my guild never kill it.
There is nothing wrong either way, having harsh death penalty or having no death penalty.
For some people having harsh death penalty add to the game play, make it more exciting.
But having harsh death penalty also sometime mean people need to do something they don't want to do, so they can do what they want to do.
Lastly no death penalty dont' mean you can have infinite try on a raid boss. The reality is in most raid you really only have a few try on the boss before someone need to call it a night. Out of the few games I played which have raids, alot of the boss my guild never kill it.
Death penalty is still not the same thing as difficulty.
What does really hard death penalty matter if the game is sp easy that people rarely die?
Most hard death penalties just add to the grind which in itself is easy.
Hard is stuff that the majority of the playerbase gets a huge problem completing. A dungeon or raid that just a few players can complete is hard (well, unless it just is a matter of gear restrictions and most players just don´t have the gear for it).
Easy is stuff almost all players can complete without any huge issues.
Death penalty can of course decrease the number of times a group can retry a boss, but if you think that is hard then GWs missions where you fail if you wipe would be even more hardcore.
Death penalty can be one of the factors that make a game hard but it isn't the largest.
So people re-start losing fights all the time in many genre of gaming. If that entertains, i do not see why not.
So because everybody else does it that makes it right? I thought games were supposed to be fun as well as challenging.
thats exactly the main key point in just about everything narius & axehilt spam up most popular threads with.
that they feel that what the majority does or likes...... DOES == what's "right" for gaming.
i just like to keep pointing out that if they are idealogically consistent people, that they both must LOVE Justin Bieber.
cuz his popularity and money making abilities is scientific evidence of his superiority..... just as much as WoW's numbers prove about WoW's superiority.
you MUST pay heed to AxeSeldon NariusHilt's insightful wisdom.......... X million Average Joes can't be wrong!!!
its not true in games OR music. examples you see & hear, aren't all that exists.
but i understand following the herd, doing your extreme repetitious activities (both here on the forum and inside your superior games, and probably both simultaneously) doesn't leave much time for exploring the world of alternatives.
There is nothing wrong either way, having harsh death penalty or having no death penalty.
For some people having harsh death penalty add to the game play, make it more exciting.
But having harsh death penalty also sometime mean people need to do something they don't want to do, so they can do what they want to do.
Lastly no death penalty dont' mean you can have infinite try on a raid boss. The reality is in most raid you really only have a few try on the boss before someone need to call it a night. Out of the few games I played which have raids, alot of the boss my guild never kill it.
Death penalty is still not the same thing as difficulty.
What does really hard death penalty matter if the game is sp easy that people rarely die?
Most hard death penalties just add to the grind which in itself is easy.
Hard is stuff that the majority of the playerbase gets a huge problem completing. A dungeon or raid that just a few players can complete is hard (well, unless it just is a matter of gear restrictions and most players just don´t have the gear for it).
Easy is stuff almost all players can complete without any huge issues.
Death penalty can of course decrease the number of times a group can retry a boss, but if you think that is hard then GWs missions where you fail if you wipe would be even more hardcore.
Death penalty can be one of the factors that make a game hard but it isn't the largest.
It's more difficult to harvest in darkfall compare to wow right? In wow if I get ganked harvesting I just go back and continue harvest. If I get ganked harvesting in darkfall, I loss all my equipment plus everything I had harvest.
Same thing with Diablo, it's more difficult to play in hardcore mode since if I die I loss everything. But if I die in normal mode it doesn't matter. So it is infact more difficult, because dieing have meaning. You actually need to have the skill to avoid dieing. And survival it self is the game.
But I strongly disagree people should grind 4 hours just because they die raiding a boss once. I think it highly depend what the core of the game it is.
Same thing with Diablo, it's more difficult to play in hardcore mode since if I die I loss everything. But if I die in normal mode it doesn't matter. So it is infact more difficult, because dieing have meaning. You actually need to have the skill to avoid dieing. And survival it self is the game.
Hmm .. not really. All the encounters are the same difficulties. If you play in hardcore, and if you die, it takes LONGER (i.e. replay the SAME parts of the game) to back to the same point to try again.
There is no increase difficulty. It is just take longer to "recover". Personally, i think that is silly and would not waste my time playing the same parts of the game again. However, it is obviously up to the player to decide if that additional risk is preferable to him.
Nonsense. Just throw a bunch of clunky UI, archaic mechanics from previous games, and permadeath into <insert game here>. It makes the game more DIFFICULT therefore it meets my SUPERIOR armchair game developer knowledge of DIFFICULTY! Yeah!
I'm HARDCORE guys! Can't you hear me on this internet forum? HARDCORE!!!!! I have something to prove about my preferences in gaming on the internet, so I must make myself heard!
"can't you hear me internet?! i can spot some trends on the forum, but i can't keep straight who it is that says what, so i'll just mash some patterns i recognize together incoherently, & throw them at a certain type of player that i feel i'm at war with!"
Same thing with Diablo, it's more difficult to play in hardcore mode since if I die I loss everything. But if I die in normal mode it doesn't matter. So it is infact more difficult, because dieing have meaning. You actually need to have the skill to avoid dieing. And survival it self is the game.
Hmm .. not really. All the encounters are the same difficulties. If you play in hardcore, and if you die, it takes LONGER (i.e. replay the SAME parts of the game) to back to the same point to try again.
There is no increase difficulty. It is just take longer to "recover". Personally, i think that is silly and would not waste my time playing the same parts of the game again. However, it is obviously up to the player to decide if that additional risk is preferable to him.
Risk !=difficulty.
I'm specifically talking about Diablo 2. All the encounter is so easy that an 8 years old can do it. Just like mining ore in wow, or killing 10 boar in wow. It's really so easy that anyone can do it. But you can't always do it without dieing. Just like all the encounter in diablo 2 is easy. But you can still die when some midget with knife come stab you and you didn't pop a potion fast enough, or teleport fast enough.
So having death penantly created a game called not dieing. Not dieing is the game. Without it there's no difficulty at all. With it, it created a game called not dieing.
That being said I never said wow is easy. Because it do have encounter which take skill to complete. And dieing actually have meaning in raids. If I die killing boars for a quest, I dont' care, because it have no meaning. But if I die during a raid it have meaing. Even though there's no death penalty, I care if I die in raids, because the boss reset to full HP, and I have to try again, but not when I'm killing 10 boar for some quest.
I'm really just saying why "some people" call games with harsh death penalty difficult. Because it "created a game" called not dieing.
"The difficulty of an MMORPG is defined by the harshness of its world"
Pretty much agree. It's how hard the game tries to kill you *if* you're careless. At the same time there should always be a way through if you're careful. A simple metric for the first half (but not neccessarily the second) would be the number of player corpses lying around.
Another aspect is complexity. EQ's crafting isn't individually difficult but the system as whole is complex trying to juggle all the individual steps. A world with lots of start zones and a jumble of routes between them using different transport mechanisms isn't more difficult than one with two start zones and a linear path from each to a final set of pvp zones but it is more complex. Similarly with classes having lots of situational spells or skills rather than a long list of timed dps with different names and graphics. Not everyone likes complexity but it should be possible to satisfy both extremes by providing a choice e.g. a very fast, simple warrior type class with lots of dps timer buttons to click, (or a wizzie equivalent) and at the same time a more complex melee class which relies on special moves and combos (or an oldschool EQ style enchanter class as the caster equivalent).
I think when people complain about difficulty they usually mean one or both of these.
"Hmmm. I kinda want to argue that there is nothing in the game that makes the task of slaying 5000 boars difficult because, in most MMOs, the next boar is not ever more difficult then the first."
Well the simple answer is to make each individual one harder to kill and one simple way to do that is having them move around and be social and / or have other wandering mobs in amongst them or passing through which in a nutshell pushes the difficulty from killing them to pulling them.
This does require an exp penalty though. If each boar takes a minimum amount of skill to kill and gives 2% of a level's exp and dying loses 10% of a level's worth of exp then a player only progresses if they can kill 6+ per player death. You can then use this to create difficulty settings for different tastes e.g. two herds of same level boars in the same zone, one is easy to pull and kill and gives 2% exp, second herd is a pulling / killing nightmare but each boar gives 5%.
A second way to make them harder to kill without just changing their damage/hp is to give regular non-raid mobs a special attack each with a learnable signal that they're about to do it and an action that can be taken to mitigate / avoid the attack.
If you take away the individual pulling/figthing difficulty and the exp penalty then sure there's no challenge in killing 50 boars to get a level. That's the point of the thread.
I think they are 2 measure for the difficulty in an mmo, the lower one is boredom; when a game is boring, then its probably because it afford no challenge. The upper measure is the frustration, if you need to redo a fight 10 times and at the end feel like you won because of pure luck in some timing, then the game is probably too difficult. They are 2 ways to raise the difficulty, one is to make it more complex, the other is to add layers. As you said a difficult pve fight will be even more difficult if you are subject to pking for example.
But all this really goes nowhere, the question is not if it is challenging or not, but if it is interesting or not. Some game have uninteresting pve from the beginning to the end, those are called dummy like combat. You probably have very difficult fight that are not very interesting either like in Darkfall. Other like the bard in uo was kind of exponential, the more skill you built as a player, the more challenge you could find in the game, and the challenge was raising in an "organic" fashion through your gaming. You would start with chicken fight and would end up with Balrons and/or a ton of critter around that could eat you alive if you made a single mistake, and sometime did without any mistake, but you had to prepare the space around you so that no mistake could happen, and you also had to maintain that space clean from any external problems. It wasn't just killing a mob, but surviving too, looting to. Sometime you could kill the mob but had no time to actually loot the corps, so you ended up with a lot of effort and no reward.
Those are just few examples modern mmo never used, and probably why they ended up with those dummy like combat. And they are also meta game difficulty like the economy, guilds and other similar things too. Its a rather vast concept.
Comments
Well it's bad design for those 8 rooms of mobs to be substantially easier than the boss itself. The entire sequence should fit a certain level of challenge (albeit with a pacing with peaks and valleys, where some parts give the player some breathing room and others are at the height of challenge.)
But the big difference between the above argument and mine is that the argument above involves gameplay, whereas bad death penalties eat up time without any gameplay at all.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
How is killing mobs to earn back exp after dying and suffering exp loss not "gameplay?"
How is desperately running to your corpse before time runs out not "gameplay?"
The only death penalties that would meet what you describe are things like "rez sickness" where you literally can't do anything or you will die until it wears off. And I would agree that this is bad. I was never a fan of having to AFK for 10 minutes after I die while I wait for rez sickness to wear off.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
Death penalties do not make things difficult. They change the games tactical considerations.
When you go from Diablo 2 normal to hardcore the significance of abilities that get you out of bad situations radically change. They go from "meh" to absolutely essential. The gameplay itself is not harder. There is simply the changed character of tactical retreats going from fairly important to completely essential. Similarly in some games huge penalties may also affect how important it is to be very careful not to attract the wrong attention.
People think that because they are crying that they lost an awesome character that they were challenged. This is wrong. If I walk by you and punch in the gut and you roll around on the ground puking that wasn't a challenge for me or you.
However if random people are walking around assaulting people it will change your behavior. You may start sitting with your back to a wall so you can see everyone coming. You might start carrying a large stick.
The difficulty starts to come in when you actually start to do something about it when someone does assault you.
Exp/gear loss is a double whammie. Not only did you waste time on a failed attempt but you also have to spend time recouperating from your losses.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
I think the point that he is trying to get across is why should he "re-accomplish" something?
You mess up. Now you are even less able to do the task. So now you have to go do the same thing in safer place just to have another chance?
This makes little sense.
I agree that these 10 minute debuffs are no better really.
But I think both systems are stupid. If I just failed a challenge why are you making me less able to do it? Its nonsense.
Even perma-death makes more sense. At least in Rouge-likes or diablo hardcore what have you. The death means you have to try to win all over again.
The old MUD/EQ/Lineage2 way of XP loss is completely backwards. Its like amputating a wrestler's arm or a sprinters leg when they lose.
"Well you lost, looks like we have to take your arm"
"But how am I going to wrestle with out my arm."
"Look you won't learn if we don't cripple you."
"What?!"
"Look its quite simple I am not sure why you are whining. You can find a way to win. After all I have seen a guy with no legs win wrestling matches."
"So you are saying a guy with no legs has the same chance of winning?"
"Well, no, not exactly but I mean he could possibly win. I mean I have seen it happen. Now come on stop crying we have to chop off your arm."
"Fuck you, you take my arm I am taking you with me."
That is the XP loss death penalty reasoning in a nutshell.
You're confusing resetting the fight with resetting the game. What you mention is more akin to perma-death.
For the first 20 years of gaming, if you lost, you had to start over from the start, not from just before where you lost...and in those days it would even cost you another quarter to try again.
This whole "lets pretend that didn't even happen" mentality when you die is a relatively recent development.
When you talk about the difficulty of a game it really all depends on how you define "the game." In your Diablo 2 example, if you define the game as killing monsters and exploring dungeons...then no, hardcore mode does not make that more difficult.
BUT, if you define the game as "trying to kill the last boss (Mephisto?)" then hardcore mode, DEFINITELY makes the game more difficult. It goes from "kill Mephisto, you can die as many times as you like" to "kill Mephisto, if you die, you start over from the beginning."
Personally, I think the latter is a better definition. It better encapsulates the game as an entire experience rather than just look at specific parts of the game.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
I was thinking the same thing. Unfortunately in an rpg you can't completely reset the game like in old school Contra or Ghosts n Goblins.
Something is wrong in todays paradigm though. You get infinite attempts on any given fight. Losing just means starting the fight over again. Winning gives you all kinds of rewards and money. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
-- Herman Melville
What is wrong with this picture? Games are entertainment products, not training for dealing with life's problem, not a way to toughening up our resolves.
So people re-start losing fights all the time in many genre of gaming. If that entertains, i do not see why not.
Killing mobs is gameplay. The issue is many games involve a certain mandatory downtime in addition to having to kill more mobs. It's not "reset the player immediately, right now, in front of the mob that killed me". It's "spend 5-10 mins running back to my corpse to rez".
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Let's rephrase then. There is nothing wrong with time sink for people like me.
However, they are boring and extremely undesirable in a video game. Thus, you go play the game with lots of time sink and i will go play those with little ones.
Its all a matter time.
In the end if it takes you 4 tries to beat mephisto then that is what it takes. It just takes alot more time in perma-death mode to get those 4 tries.
Preferring the latter basically equates to "winning is what matters". I mean by this point of view everything else could be ridiculously easy and do 1 point of damage while you one shot everything but as long as mephisto is hard then the game is hard. This is of course reducto ad absurdum but that is a valid argumentation technique of disproving something. This case is absurd and fairly obviously so but still consistent with that definition so that definition allows the absrud and is either just wrong or incomplete.
In a perma-death game winning has a completely different meaning. In fact just go to forum about Rogue-likes such as Dugeon Crawl Stone Soup and you will notice immeidately that people have a completely different idea about the game experience. In most roguelike people approach each new game as a totally new experience and do not necessarily even expect to win.
Normal Diablo people expect to win and in fact basically WILL win unless they simply quit. They will always win. When you throw perma-death in you throw that out the window. The entire mentality of the game changes. They will sometimes win and cannot rely on a consistency of character since the game is regenerated each time.
Is a "win" going to be rarer with perma-death. Of course. Always necessarily is more than sometimes. But if the game were easy that sometimes would be like 95% and be pretty close to always. If the game were hard that sometimes would be 10% and pretty darn far off always.
Now you have a certain point in that the 95% vs 10% could be solely determined by the end boss. But should they? No I think that would be a problem. In a game that is made well those death should be spread out all over the place and have a lot of interesting variety one would think. If the vast majority of game ending deaths are at the final boss there is a problem.
I guess one could say that is hard. But I think most people would just call it poorly made.
However I would like to point out that some games use cheap mechanics to force you to win or die like locking you into the room with the boss and any game with perma-death that works this way is crap, in my opinion.
If you make a permadeath game and then prevent people from using tactics to somehow account the extra risk or change the way the game plays just for that boss.
Diablo 2 is not a true roguelike in that it was not designed from the beginning to always have perma-death. perma-death was tacked on to give a rogue-like flavor to those who wanted it. Many abilties are not costed the way they would be in a good rogue-like. In general certain movement and hiding effects in rogue-likes are costed as being much more powerful than in a non-permadeath game.
In games like Moria if you ran into the Balrog when you weren't ready it was possible to run away and there were entire strategies about when and how to avoid the Balrog and eventually beat him when you were ready.
Whereas in say Titan Quest you get locked into the room with the final boss. If it was perma-death (which it is not) that would be crap.
I said nothing to that affect. Complete red herring.
So because everybody else does it that makes it right? I thought games were supposed to be fun as well as challenging.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
-- Herman Melville
There is nothing wrong either way, having harsh death penalty or having no death penalty.
For some people having harsh death penalty add to the game play, make it more exciting.
But having harsh death penalty also sometime mean people need to do something they don't want to do, so they can do what they want to do.
Lastly no death penalty dont' mean you can have infinite try on a raid boss. The reality is in most raid you really only have a few try on the boss before someone need to call it a night. Out of the few games I played which have raids, alot of the boss my guild never kill it.
Death penalty is still not the same thing as difficulty.
What does really hard death penalty matter if the game is sp easy that people rarely die?
Most hard death penalties just add to the grind which in itself is easy.
Hard is stuff that the majority of the playerbase gets a huge problem completing. A dungeon or raid that just a few players can complete is hard (well, unless it just is a matter of gear restrictions and most players just don´t have the gear for it).
Easy is stuff almost all players can complete without any huge issues.
Death penalty can of course decrease the number of times a group can retry a boss, but if you think that is hard then GWs missions where you fail if you wipe would be even more hardcore.
Death penalty can be one of the factors that make a game hard but it isn't the largest.
thats exactly the main key point in just about everything narius & axehilt spam up most popular threads with.
that they feel that what the majority does or likes...... DOES == what's "right" for gaming.
i just like to keep pointing out that if they are idealogically consistent people, that they both must LOVE Justin Bieber.
cuz his popularity and money making abilities is scientific evidence of his superiority..... just as much as WoW's numbers prove about WoW's superiority.
you MUST pay heed to AxeSeldon NariusHilt's insightful wisdom.......... X million Average Joes can't be wrong!!!
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that quote kind of stands on its own, but.....
its not true in games OR music. examples you see & hear, aren't all that exists.
but i understand following the herd, doing your extreme repetitious activities (both here on the forum and inside your superior games, and probably both simultaneously) doesn't leave much time for exploring the world of alternatives.
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It's more difficult to harvest in darkfall compare to wow right? In wow if I get ganked harvesting I just go back and continue harvest. If I get ganked harvesting in darkfall, I loss all my equipment plus everything I had harvest.
Same thing with Diablo, it's more difficult to play in hardcore mode since if I die I loss everything. But if I die in normal mode it doesn't matter. So it is infact more difficult, because dieing have meaning. You actually need to have the skill to avoid dieing. And survival it self is the game.
But I strongly disagree people should grind 4 hours just because they die raiding a boss once. I think it highly depend what the core of the game it is.
Hmm .. not really. All the encounters are the same difficulties. If you play in hardcore, and if you die, it takes LONGER (i.e. replay the SAME parts of the game) to back to the same point to try again.
There is no increase difficulty. It is just take longer to "recover". Personally, i think that is silly and would not waste my time playing the same parts of the game again. However, it is obviously up to the player to decide if that additional risk is preferable to him.
Risk !=difficulty.
Nonsense. Just throw a bunch of clunky UI, archaic mechanics from previous games, and permadeath into <insert game here>. It makes the game more DIFFICULT therefore it meets my SUPERIOR armchair game developer knowledge of DIFFICULTY! Yeah!
I'm HARDCORE guys! Can't you hear me on this internet forum? HARDCORE!!!!! I have something to prove about my preferences in gaming on the internet, so I must make myself heard!
that sounds like:
"can't you hear me internet?! i can spot some trends on the forum, but i can't keep straight who it is that says what, so i'll just mash some patterns i recognize together incoherently, & throw them at a certain type of player that i feel i'm at war with!"
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I'm specifically talking about Diablo 2. All the encounter is so easy that an 8 years old can do it. Just like mining ore in wow, or killing 10 boar in wow. It's really so easy that anyone can do it. But you can't always do it without dieing. Just like all the encounter in diablo 2 is easy. But you can still die when some midget with knife come stab you and you didn't pop a potion fast enough, or teleport fast enough.
So having death penantly created a game called not dieing. Not dieing is the game. Without it there's no difficulty at all. With it, it created a game called not dieing.
That being said I never said wow is easy. Because it do have encounter which take skill to complete. And dieing actually have meaning in raids. If I die killing boars for a quest, I dont' care, because it have no meaning. But if I die during a raid it have meaing. Even though there's no death penalty, I care if I die in raids, because the boss reset to full HP, and I have to try again, but not when I'm killing 10 boar for some quest.
I'm really just saying why "some people" call games with harsh death penalty difficult. Because it "created a game" called not dieing.
"The difficulty of an MMORPG is defined by the harshness of its world"
Pretty much agree. It's how hard the game tries to kill you *if* you're careless. At the same time there should always be a way through if you're careful. A simple metric for the first half (but not neccessarily the second) would be the number of player corpses lying around.
Another aspect is complexity. EQ's crafting isn't individually difficult but the system as whole is complex trying to juggle all the individual steps. A world with lots of start zones and a jumble of routes between them using different transport mechanisms isn't more difficult than one with two start zones and a linear path from each to a final set of pvp zones but it is more complex. Similarly with classes having lots of situational spells or skills rather than a long list of timed dps with different names and graphics. Not everyone likes complexity but it should be possible to satisfy both extremes by providing a choice e.g. a very fast, simple warrior type class with lots of dps timer buttons to click, (or a wizzie equivalent) and at the same time a more complex melee class which relies on special moves and combos (or an oldschool EQ style enchanter class as the caster equivalent).
I think when people complain about difficulty they usually mean one or both of these.
"Hmmm. I kinda want to argue that there is nothing in the game that makes the task of slaying 5000 boars difficult because, in most MMOs, the next boar is not ever more difficult then the first."
Well the simple answer is to make each individual one harder to kill and one simple way to do that is having them move around and be social and / or have other wandering mobs in amongst them or passing through which in a nutshell pushes the difficulty from killing them to pulling them.
This does require an exp penalty though. If each boar takes a minimum amount of skill to kill and gives 2% of a level's exp and dying loses 10% of a level's worth of exp then a player only progresses if they can kill 6+ per player death. You can then use this to create difficulty settings for different tastes e.g. two herds of same level boars in the same zone, one is easy to pull and kill and gives 2% exp, second herd is a pulling / killing nightmare but each boar gives 5%.
A second way to make them harder to kill without just changing their damage/hp is to give regular non-raid mobs a special attack each with a learnable signal that they're about to do it and an action that can be taken to mitigate / avoid the attack.
If you take away the individual pulling/figthing difficulty and the exp penalty then sure there's no challenge in killing 50 boars to get a level. That's the point of the thread.
I think they are 2 measure for the difficulty in an mmo, the lower one is boredom; when a game is boring, then its probably because it afford no challenge. The upper measure is the frustration, if you need to redo a fight 10 times and at the end feel like you won because of pure luck in some timing, then the game is probably too difficult. They are 2 ways to raise the difficulty, one is to make it more complex, the other is to add layers. As you said a difficult pve fight will be even more difficult if you are subject to pking for example.
But all this really goes nowhere, the question is not if it is challenging or not, but if it is interesting or not. Some game have uninteresting pve from the beginning to the end, those are called dummy like combat. You probably have very difficult fight that are not very interesting either like in Darkfall. Other like the bard in uo was kind of exponential, the more skill you built as a player, the more challenge you could find in the game, and the challenge was raising in an "organic" fashion through your gaming. You would start with chicken fight and would end up with Balrons and/or a ton of critter around that could eat you alive if you made a single mistake, and sometime did without any mistake, but you had to prepare the space around you so that no mistake could happen, and you also had to maintain that space clean from any external problems. It wasn't just killing a mob, but surviving too, looting to. Sometime you could kill the mob but had no time to actually loot the corps, so you ended up with a lot of effort and no reward.
Those are just few examples modern mmo never used, and probably why they ended up with those dummy like combat. And they are also meta game difficulty like the economy, guilds and other similar things too. Its a rather vast concept.