If you want challenging PvE like old EQ, you should take a look at Vanguard. It's basically the spiritual succesor to old EQ.
Um ... not at all.
Critters die in seconds in Vanguard, at least if you're playing a sorcerer.
Okay, no longer on highlevel, then it takes like 30 sec or something, even on a sorc. Then there even is a chance of death, because Sorc is so damn fragile and if you dont find your defense spells fast enough, you might be toast. Some opponents that are immue to ice (and thus to the slow stuff Sorc has) or sleep (and thus to the only CC Sorc gets) are at least extremely tough, if not impossible to solo.
But I rarely, if ever, fear death on the right classes. Cleric, Disciple, Bear Shaman, Paladin, Dread Knight, Necromancer - these classes are basically unkillable. Blood Mage is close. Monk can fake death everything if its too tough. Rogue and Ranger can sneak around anything if they dont like it. Bards can stay invis and run away at extreme speeds if they dont like something. They also get a lot of CC, and Psionicist get even more. Druid also has quite a bag of tricks available.
OP I would suggest TSW as there is almost no CC (which sucks) that will get you of a bad situation. As there is no effective CC, you have to be very aware of your surroundings and your pulls. Also the mob density in parts of the game is quite high. I think this along with the story are the highlights of the game.
I too wish for a day that PvE content was sorta challenging. I've had a few good moments in GW2 with champion bosses, but the devs have the game locked down so tight there is no room for thinking outside the box and getting creative. Someday a smaller dev will give some freedom back to the gamers and let us come up with creative uses of the abilities (FD pulling, pet pulling, aggro bouncing). These mechanics were challenging because if the mob got to you it was game over.
Hopefully preparation will someday also become a bit more significant. Planning pulls and setting up buffs prior to fighting. I also miss loot from specific types of mobs being important. GW2 went halfway there by having crafting mats drop off certain types of mobs but they still use the boring ass universal loot table for everything not crafting releating. Give me a reason to kill some types of mobs. With GW2 everyone that does significant damage to a mob gets the loot feature, spawn stealing would not be an issue.
I'm not sure that there are any games out there that really fit the EQ1 mold of difficulty and freedom to get creative with the mechanics of the game. Here's pulling for that smaller dev that will have the guts to make an updated EQ1 type game.
Edit: I see everyone saying Vanguard. It may be a bit more challenging than some of the other recent MMO's but it's not anywhere near the level of EQ1. Not to mention the game feels half finished and highly unpolished. Great game world though.
There is little chalange in pvp gear, put on your simple robes and equip your low level sowrd, see if that increase your chalange.
What do you mean by challange?
Can you avoid hits by using terain, cover behind objects, moving around, aiming to hit, using your creativity? most games use this locked culculated system, where you gear-up and equip you restoration potions, you get hit even behind objects.
Challange is pure freedom without lock-on skills and a simple gear.
The most challenging for me is actually wow or gw2. Try to do some of the instance solo where it suppose to be done by 5 man is quite difficult.
I always remember one of those you tube video where a warlock try to solo one of those heroic dungeon in wow a few years ago. I try to replicate what he does and I simply can't do it. The timing have to be perfect to kite the way he does.
That being said most of the 5 man dungeon in those game isn't soloable. Just like when people talk about those "other games", many of the mobs are pretty much not soloable. So that is what make them tough, you can't solo them. I mean I played darkfall, and those mob pretty much isn't soloable. Maybe they will be when I get more skill or stats or weapon etc. But I pretty much do many of them... I didn't get very far in that game.
Wizardry online, seriously check it out if you want hard pve encounters OUTSIDE some bullshit 5-man & 20-man instances. This game is build up on amazingly hard dungeons.
There is little chalange in pvp gear, put on your simple robes and equip your low level sowrd, see if that increase your chalange.
What do you mean by challange?
Can you avoid hits by using terain, cover behind objects, moving around, aiming to hit, using your creativity? most games use this locked culculated system, where you gear-up and equip you restoration potions, you get hit even behind objects.
Challange is pure freedom without lock-on skills and a simple gear.
Challenging is when, your group is knee deep in mobs and roamed comes along right when you have a runner. The runner gets away and pulls 4 more mobs while your group is low on mana , and the mobs your fighting will 2 or 3 shot anyone but the tank.
challenging is actually learning now to pull complicated rooms where a mistake means death to the entire group and possibly other groups in the area..
random spawns, and roaming mobs which most games don't use often these days can go a long way to add challenging OVE
There is little chalange in pvp gear, put on your simple robes and equip your low level sowrd, see if that increase your chalange.
What do you mean by challange?
Can you avoid hits by using terain, cover behind objects, moving around, aiming to hit, using your creativity? most games use this locked culculated system, where you gear-up and equip you restoration potions, you get hit even behind objects.
Challange is pure freedom without lock-on skills and a simple gear.
Challenging is when, your group is knee deep in mobs and roamed comes along right when you have a runner. The runner gets away and pulls 4 more mobs while your group is low on mana , and the mobs your fighting will 2 or 3 shot anyone but the tank.
challenging is actually learning now to pull complicated rooms where a mistake means death to the entire group and possibly other groups in the area..
random spawns, and roaming mobs which most games don't use often these days can go a long way to add challenging OVE
You have a wrong view of meaning for the "challenge".
First : you sated groop and countless mobs.
Then : you stated way to grief your group.
Word "challenge" is not what you think it is.
Challenge is when you have obsticles and you have to overcome them using your brain not spam system.
The great thing about PVE is you can make the combat as easy or as hard as you want....Even WoW is challenging if you go fight monsters considerably higher than you.
There is little chalange in pvp gear, put on your simple robes and equip your low level sowrd, see if that increase your chalange.
What do you mean by challange?
Can you avoid hits by using terain, cover behind objects, moving around, aiming to hit, using your creativity? most games use this locked culculated system, where you gear-up and equip you restoration potions, you get hit even behind objects.
Challange is pure freedom without lock-on skills and a simple gear.
Challenging is when, your group is knee deep in mobs and roamed comes along right when you have a runner. The runner gets away and pulls 4 more mobs while your group is low on mana , and the mobs your fighting will 2 or 3 shot anyone but the tank.
challenging is actually learning now to pull complicated rooms where a mistake means death to the entire group and possibly other groups in the area..
random spawns, and roaming mobs which most games don't use often these days can go a long way to add challenging OVE
You have a wrong view of meaning for the "challenge".
First : you sated groop and countless mobs.
Then : you stated way to grief your group.
Word "challenge" is not what you think it is.
Challenge is when you have obsticles and you have to overcome them using your brain not spam system.
No puzzles can be challenging as well. However tanks knowing now to multi aggro and keeping it can be challenging . Knowing which mobs to take out first can make the difference between the group wiping or not. Games like EQ threw in Roamers that could arrive at random points which can Throw a wrench in your efforts. Or other groups pulling trains which would aggro on your group. It kept you on your toes and looking out over your shoulder. Most games today are so structured that once you learn a dungeon, its always the same. There is no element of surprise. That's not to say that learning the dungeon can't prove a challenge. However once the puzzle part is figured out. It becomes fairly easy. Unless your playing with a bunch of button spammers who are so solo oriIented they dont know now to play witha a team. Then it becomes. It so much as a challenge but a lessson in futility.
These elements of chaos not only help to provide challenge but also adds replayability.
TERA... WoW... Lineage 2 and what else ? Hello Kitty World Online ?
Men I understand why there are so many crappy mmo now...
Take some real mmo experiences first before talk about crappy games like what I read...
Many of us (like me) didn't participate to debates since a WHILE (VERY rare for me now) on various forums because the mmo aspect from players is completly fucked by you crappy mmo copied from asia market (nothing new since 2000...).
There is no more real debates about these games. You eat the shit they want and "that's enough for my joy". OMG !
[mod edit]
(if you have problem with my grammar i don't care, I talk too many langages for reach the perfection for each)
Take some real mmo experiences first before talk about crappy games like what I read...
Ok, at that level of smarmy baitin', I just can't resist nibbling. Which title do you recommend?
No no, you can't sneak back out: Your game (you assure us) is vastly superior. Which game(s), exactly?
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
"The simple is the seal of the true and beauty is the splendor of truth" -Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar Authored 139 missions in VendettaOnline and 6 tracks in Distance
...and no, I wasn't replying to Icewhite, just to make that clear.
"The simple is the seal of the true and beauty is the splendor of truth" -Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar Authored 139 missions in VendettaOnline and 6 tracks in Distance
Raids and difficult dungeons back then were really challenging, even with good loot. Very few people completed the hardest dungeon in TSO while it was still current content. Most who did were raid geared and then sold loot rights (after they nerfed the procs anyway).
As few as Sunwell? Which i believe only 2% of the players ever did (at the time it was current).
The AI that was introduced with the wormhole mobs makes for some rather challenging encounters. A scaled back version of that AI was spread out to a lot of other mobs in the recent Retribution expansion but even scaled back it makes for some challenging scenarios.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Diablo 3 offers recently adaptable solo challenge (MP0-10), but MMO's simply can't offer this due to their needed avatar progress.
If one MMO would include such a feature in the future it would be an instant hit, but you would need adaptable challenges in an open world, setting the monsters/enemy difficulty yourself etc...
Perhaps Blizzard can do it with their experience in D3' MP play and phasing technique (no loading screens and still get a solo exprerience), perhaps in Titan ?
I think it can be done in a MMO, at least in the instances. In fact, WOW already have 3 levels of raid difficulty and DDO has different difficulty for their dungeons, so it is certainly not impossible.
To calibrate it well takes work though. Note that in the D3 MP system, you get more xp, and loot for higher MP. It works because loot is random. You can get the same godly item in low MP and high MP ... just that the chance is lower in lower MP. Thus, people can choose the MP they are comfortable doing, instead of forcing one way or another.
(Turns out that if you want to paragon level, it is most efficient to do MP0, thus in the next patch they are tweaking the xp gain, and increase it in high MP).
So it takes some calibrating and effort to make it work. I think the same thing can be done in instanced dungeons.
Comments
Um ... not at all.
Critters die in seconds in Vanguard, at least if you're playing a sorcerer.
Okay, no longer on highlevel, then it takes like 30 sec or something, even on a sorc. Then there even is a chance of death, because Sorc is so damn fragile and if you dont find your defense spells fast enough, you might be toast. Some opponents that are immue to ice (and thus to the slow stuff Sorc has) or sleep (and thus to the only CC Sorc gets) are at least extremely tough, if not impossible to solo.
But I rarely, if ever, fear death on the right classes. Cleric, Disciple, Bear Shaman, Paladin, Dread Knight, Necromancer - these classes are basically unkillable. Blood Mage is close. Monk can fake death everything if its too tough. Rogue and Ranger can sneak around anything if they dont like it. Bards can stay invis and run away at extreme speeds if they dont like something. They also get a lot of CC, and Psionicist get even more. Druid also has quite a bag of tricks available.
OP I would suggest TSW as there is almost no CC (which sucks) that will get you of a bad situation. As there is no effective CC, you have to be very aware of your surroundings and your pulls. Also the mob density in parts of the game is quite high. I think this along with the story are the highlights of the game.
I too wish for a day that PvE content was sorta challenging. I've had a few good moments in GW2 with champion bosses, but the devs have the game locked down so tight there is no room for thinking outside the box and getting creative. Someday a smaller dev will give some freedom back to the gamers and let us come up with creative uses of the abilities (FD pulling, pet pulling, aggro bouncing). These mechanics were challenging because if the mob got to you it was game over.
Hopefully preparation will someday also become a bit more significant. Planning pulls and setting up buffs prior to fighting. I also miss loot from specific types of mobs being important. GW2 went halfway there by having crafting mats drop off certain types of mobs but they still use the boring ass universal loot table for everything not crafting releating. Give me a reason to kill some types of mobs. With GW2 everyone that does significant damage to a mob gets the loot feature, spawn stealing would not be an issue.
I'm not sure that there are any games out there that really fit the EQ1 mold of difficulty and freedom to get creative with the mechanics of the game. Here's pulling for that smaller dev that will have the guts to make an updated EQ1 type game.
Edit: I see everyone saying Vanguard. It may be a bit more challenging than some of the other recent MMO's but it's not anywhere near the level of EQ1. Not to mention the game feels half finished and highly unpolished. Great game world though.
There is little chalange in pvp gear, put on your simple robes and equip your low level sowrd, see if that increase your chalange.
What do you mean by challange?
Can you avoid hits by using terain, cover behind objects, moving around, aiming to hit, using your creativity? most games use this locked culculated system, where you gear-up and equip you restoration potions, you get hit even behind objects.
Challange is pure freedom without lock-on skills and a simple gear.
The most challenging for me is actually wow or gw2. Try to do some of the instance solo where it suppose to be done by 5 man is quite difficult.
I always remember one of those you tube video where a warlock try to solo one of those heroic dungeon in wow a few years ago. I try to replicate what he does and I simply can't do it. The timing have to be perfect to kite the way he does.
That being said most of the 5 man dungeon in those game isn't soloable. Just like when people talk about those "other games", many of the mobs are pretty much not soloable. So that is what make them tough, you can't solo them. I mean I played darkfall, and those mob pretty much isn't soloable. Maybe they will be when I get more skill or stats or weapon etc. But I pretty much do many of them... I didn't get very far in that game.
Challenging is when, your group is knee deep in mobs and roamed comes along right when you have a runner. The runner gets away and pulls 4 more mobs while your group is low on mana , and the mobs your fighting will 2 or 3 shot anyone but the tank.
challenging is actually learning now to pull complicated rooms where a mistake means death to the entire group and possibly other groups in the area..
random spawns, and roaming mobs which most games don't use often these days can go a long way to add challenging OVE
You have a wrong view of meaning for the "challenge".
First : you sated groop and countless mobs.
Then : you stated way to grief your group.
Word "challenge" is not what you think it is.
Challenge is when you have obsticles and you have to overcome them using your brain not spam system.
No puzzles can be challenging as well. However tanks knowing now to multi aggro and keeping it can be challenging . Knowing which mobs to take out first can make the difference between the group wiping or not. Games like EQ threw in Roamers that could arrive at random points which can Throw a wrench in your efforts. Or other groups pulling trains which would aggro on your group. It kept you on your toes and looking out over your shoulder. Most games today are so structured that once you learn a dungeon, its always the same. There is no element of surprise. That's not to say that learning the dungeon can't prove a challenge. However once the puzzle part is figured out. It becomes fairly easy. Unless your playing with a bunch of button spammers who are so solo oriIented they dont know now to play witha a team. Then it becomes. It so much as a challenge but a lessson in futility.
These elements of chaos not only help to provide challenge but also adds replayability.
Seriously guys... mmo players are changing...
TERA... WoW... Lineage 2 and what else ? Hello Kitty World Online ?
Men I understand why there are so many crappy mmo now...
Take some real mmo experiences first before talk about crappy games like what I read...
Many of us (like me) didn't participate to debates since a WHILE (VERY rare for me now) on various forums because the mmo aspect from players is completly fucked by you crappy mmo copied from asia market (nothing new since 2000...).
There is no more real debates about these games. You eat the shit they want and "that's enough for my joy". OMG !
[mod edit]
(if you have problem with my grammar i don't care, I talk too many langages for reach the perfection for each)
Ok, at that level of smarmy baitin', I just can't resist nibbling. Which title do you recommend?
No no, you can't sneak back out: Your game (you assure us) is vastly superior. Which game(s), exactly?
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
"The simple is the seal of the true and beauty is the splendor of truth" -Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
Authored 139 missions in Vendetta Online and 6 tracks in Distance
"The simple is the seal of the true and beauty is the splendor of truth" -Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
Authored 139 missions in Vendetta Online and 6 tracks in Distance
As few as Sunwell? Which i believe only 2% of the players ever did (at the time it was current).
Have you tried EVE Online?
The AI that was introduced with the wormhole mobs makes for some rather challenging encounters. A scaled back version of that AI was spread out to a lot of other mobs in the recent Retribution expansion but even scaled back it makes for some challenging scenarios.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
I think it can be done in a MMO, at least in the instances. In fact, WOW already have 3 levels of raid difficulty and DDO has different difficulty for their dungeons, so it is certainly not impossible.
To calibrate it well takes work though. Note that in the D3 MP system, you get more xp, and loot for higher MP. It works because loot is random. You can get the same godly item in low MP and high MP ... just that the chance is lower in lower MP. Thus, people can choose the MP they are comfortable doing, instead of forcing one way or another.
(Turns out that if you want to paragon level, it is most efficient to do MP0, thus in the next patch they are tweaking the xp gain, and increase it in high MP).
So it takes some calibrating and effort to make it work. I think the same thing can be done in instanced dungeons.