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Why do MMO's not have Difficulty sliders, again?
Notimeforbs
Member CommonPosts: 346
So... We have these MMO's and all I ever hear people talk about is that they don't have feature X or feature Y. The game is too easy. The game is too hard.
Why don't MMO's have a difficulty slider or some kind of thing where you can put a checkmark beside the things you want your game to have? When you make a new character, go down the list:
Can I play, Daddy?: Just play the game. Don't check anything. This is for the kids, carebears, and the casuals.
Bring 'em on!: Check as many of these as you want at character creation. Maybe you are rewarded with better loot drops or better money earnings depending on how many you check. Maybe you do it just for the challenge. Who knows? These cannot be changed after you have created the character. This is for people who have balls.
1. Corpse Run.
When you die, you have to find your corpse to get your stuff and XP back.
2. XP Loss on Death.
If you die, you lose XP even if you find your corpse.
3. Lootable Corpse
If you enable this, and the person you fight in PvP has it enabled, the winner (and only the winner) gets to loot the other player's corpse. If only one person has it checked, no one has loot rights. If you die in PvE, no one can loot your corpse... or maybe they can?
4. Ironman Mode
Perma-Death. No exceptions... ... Well, maybe you can buy and sell 1-Ups lol. But they are absolutely the most rare thing in the game. People should have to fight for them!
5. Longer XP cycles
You require twice as much XP to level up.... Maybe more!
6. Massive Criticals
You take twice as much damage on Critical Hits.
7. Massive Damage
All White Damage dealt to you is increased.
8. Anti-Social
Your chatbox is completely disabled. You don't want to talk to anyone... but even better... they don't want to talk to you. Have fun with your MMO.
I am Death incarnate!: Check everything available in Hard Mode (Anti-Social is not necessary.) This is for Developers who have God Mode enabled and/or People who were born from the seed of a Spartan and have Dragon Blood coursing through their veins. If ever you manage to legitimately get to Max Level or whatever... you get something so awesome.... you will be the coolest dude in the universe until the next game is released!
Seems to me this sort of thing should be in MMO's, pronto. And really, I don't know how you checking any of this would affect any other player's game.
Comments
Why? Why should me wanting to play Ironman Mode effect you? If I wanted to be even... I wouldn't check it. How does my one life affect your game?
How? You knew the risks going into it. It would all be on you.
Why doesn't Bill Gates build an elevator to the moon? Why doesn't a snail just evolve legs like a centipede and haul ass?
MMORPG's are not single player games. You cannot have a set of options as you have described and then program for each scenario for each player and then change the dynamic even more should those players party together. Think of the loot tables, experience tables, etc that you would have to program to fit each and every choice.
MMORPG's are for people to share the same experience, to explore and fight side by side. They are not built to suite the needs of each individual's playing ability. That is what they make Halo and Call of Duty for.
People will always care about other people in MMO's. Either you get it or you don't. I've had lengthy arguments with people like you in the past about this very fact and they never get it but more importantly they don't want to because they have a different mindset except when something irks them, like guilds exploiting raid bosses to gear up. Not economy ruining stuff but simply just using exploits to put certain mobs on farm to gear up a guild. They sure care about other players and what they do THEN.
if i have the option to turn it off ill never turn it on. If i dont have the option to turn it off ill never play that game.
A better way to do the lootable corpse is with a criminal system. If you are a griefer and kill neutral or good people you get negative points towards criminal status. If you are a criminal and a good player kills you they can loot your corpse. If another criminal kills you he gains possitive points to reduce his criminal status. A good player can become neutral and subsequently criminal by looting a good player corpse. Kind of a police vs criminal thing. You can get away with your crimes but if a good player kills you and you are a criminal the penalty is more severe than if you died with a good status.
The reason is simple,the options are usually there in game,you just have to look.You want a tougher fight,it should not take very long at all to find one,no check marks needed.I 100% guarantee you can fight a fight you lose 100% of the time.
You want to or don't want to craft,choice is there ,no check marks needed.You want to quest or not,again your choice,no check marks needed,no sliders needed.
people are just so used to following a game on rails,all they see is yellow markers and they follow that,then if they can't find anymore...uh oh time to complain or ask others "what do i do now" or "Well this sucks,how is end game? ".
IMO Wow really did ruin this genre and in a huge way.Players are so used to soloing now and following yellow markers they don't know any better and refuse to play any other way.It is so sad many gamer's don't even care about a game anymore,the FIRST thing they ask is "How is end game? ".
So ya no sliders or check marks needed,if your anti social and don't like others,then obviously perhaps a MMO is not really where you should be?I am not a big meany,i do understand everything,i realize we go to events with just a GF or wife or kids and can enjoy the huge event without having to actually interact with the crowd,however my friends,gaming in an mmo is about interaction.
Other options like criticals and stuff are usually already in the game in some fashion,example hit icon 3 and you get 20% more dps but take 20% more dmg,most games already have these abilities.I do like the EQ2 way of locking xp,however it is needed because you gray out mobs and that idea i don't like.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Yeah, I get what you're saying. I understand what some people think MMO's should be. But it is obvious that not everyone agrees with what you think it should be.
Some people want more challenge. Some people want to experience the thrill of having only one life in the game.
Nothing in that list requires different loot tables or the scaling back of enemy power. Grouping with people who have any of these options enabled will encourage communication, "Hey, by the way... if I die... I'm dead." - "Oh, well, me too. Let's see how far we get in the game. HEY! Maybe we could start a guild of other players like us!"
It makes zero changes to the world. It specifically changes the challenge level of the player character. They don't have to get better rewards. The point isn't to increase your challenge for better rewards. That was just something I threw in there.
I still don't see how this is affecting anything beyond the player, and what sort of experience they want.
People like me? Dude, you don't even know me. How does anything I said even remotely translate into "People shouldn't care about other people." How does playing in Ironman mode on an alternate character for the extra challenge translate into uneven gameplay that ruins the game?
What are you even talking about, exploiting?
MMOs have difficulty sliders. You adventure in areas above your level or below your level.
... You're getting hung up on unnecessary details.
The point isn't that what I wrote is the best way to handle the option. The point is you have the option in the first place.
Being able to turn these features on and off are on a whim is too easily exploited. You might turn it off for the big boss fight or whatever so that it is easier. But that defeats the purpose of having it to begin with. Either you go with it at the beginning and stick to it... or you don't do it at all.
How does that equate to optional Perma-Death, Corpse Run, XP Loss.... pracitcally anything on that list?
The premise of your OP is that people talk about things being too easy or too hard correct? I don't have to know you at all. I just have to deal with what you write here. Your personality is not what's up for discussion so saying " I don't know you" is a bit out of place
Your other premise, how it affect others what kind of difficult setting you choose. It doesn't. However this still doesn't solve the issue that people want everybody to go through the same trial, time sink or difficulty to get to the same goal. Last but not least as already explained, there's a reason for that. When people want increased difficulty in any given MMO they want the difficulty raised for everybody. This is not necessarily true when it comes to making things easier.
Exploiting is just one aspect where other people care about what YOU do and how easy or hard a game is for YOU. Another aspect is class adjustments, nerfs and buffs all in the name of all things equal. While we are not talking about exploiting at all, it is however an excellent example how player A cares about player B's gaming experience even for those that likes to argue the point "People shouldn't care about what I do in a MMO"
TL:DR - People don't care about you wanting a personal Iron Man feature. They care about being told they should just adjust their difficulty slider and stop complaining if the game is too easy or hard
If I want permadeath, there's nothing stopping me from deleting my character when it dies.
If I want a longer exp cycle, I can alternate between two characters.
I like the idea of taboos that players can choose to live under, I think it's a huge design space. I just think that the way to show developers that there's a demand for it is for players to show that they are making full use of any self-imposable nerfs they have available.
the systems for such a game would be impossible to make, much less to balance. let's just take one tiny example.
you are in a pvp fight. you have more damage enabled, they don't. you lose. period.
or you're fighting a critter it mauls the crap out of you. a player without damage boosts on could stroll through it. how would you balance that? it's like a lowbie running a high level dungeon. you would have effectively half the hp. devs can't balance for both full and under powered players.
or corpse run. player hangs around till you die. takes all your stuff. they wouldn't be in nearly as much danger as you so they could wait. maybe get you a little extra aggro. or heck say you can't be looted from pve. same player could easily grief you by making recovery impossible.
no. there's just no way to balance it. other people have said it: as an mmo, it needs to be for everyone playing. you are never in a vacuum in an mmo, even when you're alone.
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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?"
Stop trying to lawyer your invalid points like it makes a difference.
You said, "People like you..." You don't even know me or what people I am like. You're trying to pigeonhole me into a fantasy version of who you would like me to be, because that would make it easier for you when you start breaking my post apart based on circumstances I never eluded to in the first place. You are responding to your fantasy version of me - not what I wrote. Everything you are saying is filtered through that fantasy opinion of me. And worst of all... you aren't even making sense.
People can change difficulty sliders all the time in SP games. Their unwillingness to not use them is not a fault of the game design. It is a fault of theirs for having ridiculous expectations for other people that only they themselves have the power to meet. How would this not hold true to a MP game of any kind? Fighting games allow for a player set handicap. If they want a more difficult challenge, they increase the handicap. That's exactly the same thing that I am talking about here.
People care about an exploit that invokes a handicap on the person exploiting? What are you crazy? If they don't want to deal with the increased difficulty - they wouldn't use the exploit in the first place! And besides that, whoever heard of an "exploit" that makes the game more difficult for the person exploiting? No one has heard of this, because those aren't exploits... they're bugs, and those are usually reported. You're bringing up a completely irrelevant point. Exploits are used and abused when they offer an advantage. People don't like it when other people cheat and gain an advantage. I'm not talking about giving players an advantage.
How does "You receive more Damage when hit with a Critical Hit" provide the person who checked the box with an advantage? Sure, it gives the other player an advantage.... but the person who checked that option knew that it would give everyone else the advantage. He checked it on purpose! How would anyone who is landing Critical Hits on him be bothered by this? Why would he complain about others beating him up too easily, when he was the one who chose to have that feature enabled? Why would anyone who doesn't like this feature, want to participate in content with the player who uses it?
Are you sure you should be arguing anything? You aren't making very good sense.
You're getting hung up on circumstantial details that are not thoroughly explain in my original post. I'm not going to sit here and write out a completely full design document that explains how to cover every possible thing you might think of. And no... it isn't impossible. It just isn't something I'm prepared to do right at this point in time.
Balance? That's the point. The vanilla game IS balanced. You don't balance the game according to these selections. The player takes them at their own risk specifically to make it harder. If you don't like them... don't use them - the game is balanced without them.
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.
Personally I would be happy with easy and hard mode servers (better droprate at hardmode of course).
Right now it feels like only a small portion of the games (PvE wise) are challenging, the rest are made to be easy for Joe and Jill Average. We don't really need permadeath or high penalties either, just a challenge to play so it wouldn't really be that much extra work for the devs.
Difficulty sliders existed as early as 2004 in MMOs. Diablo had it licked in 1996, right?
ARPG's in general don't seem to have a lot of issues with the core concepts. Playing one right now that handles dynamic scaling seamlessly. Most NCSoft games, ANet seems to get it.
It's hard to imagine why modern MMOs (or players) would still want the same old problems with risk vs. reward. From the first page; looks like mostly inertia and the desire to control how other players experience their games? Ever Blizzard's come around (slowly) to the idea that raids could/should scale too.
But there's millions of different players, with millions of different ideas about what the 'right' way to play is.
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.
Lets take WoW for example.. I"m not in favor of having individual sliders, but I would be in favor of having special servers.. I would think about going back to WoW if they would change some of their settings on select servers..
You're retorting all posts but you didn't even get past the second. Understand what was just said, realise you don't know everything and you're not the boss of everything and then understand things are the way they are for a reason. Then you might discover some intelligent dialogue.
MMO's do have different levels of difficultly but people choose to ignore them and then complain on forums about how the game is being made for casuals.
The Enlightened take things Lightly