It's not that I think you are wrong about this, it's that I think you are too focused on this one element of a much larger picture.
Even if you engineer the perfect difficulty that is right on the edge of my personal sweet spot, if you keep giving it to me, it gets bland. An MMO needs texture, it needs punctuation. To get great memories, you need contrast, you need moments that stand out from the background routine.
Look at this way: good, memorable battles are the loot of the exploration side of game.
Seems like things are getting a bit off topic (it's about spawn systems, not how people should be treated and why). I don't want this to degrade into arguing over weather players deserve to be included regardless of merit. That is not what this thread is intended for. Lets please try to steer this back on topic. Because, as it stands it is using spawn system discussion as a plank to walk off into an ocean of other stuff.
I prefer the spawn type where I can control when I spawn something and get on with my life.
I had spawns with a respawn time. I hate respawns with a window. I hate spawns that there is only one of at a time which cuts off how many people can kill it.
It's not that I think you are wrong about this, it's that I think you are too focused on this one element of a much larger picture.
Even if you engineer the perfect difficulty that is right on the edge of my personal sweet spot, if you keep giving it to me, it gets bland. An MMO needs texture, it needs punctuation. To get great memories, you need contrast, you need moments that stand out from the background routine.
Look at this way: good, memorable battles are the loot of the exploration side of game.
First, the sweet spot is a range of difficulty and not precisely the same difficulty each time. Looks like someone threw together a convenient chart of it recently for some Firefall post: image. It's a little weird to graph it as Difficulty vs. Skill, but it's basically the same idea.
Second, in RPGs there will naturally be a cycle to the challenge. You'll fight mobs which will progressively get harder, then you'll level and they'll be very easy for a while, but as you keep progressing and fighting harder mobs it gets tough again, then you level...Even with a system dynamically adjusting difficulty, this is going to be the case because that system will likely be driven by one factor (like level) while the player's strength is the result of many factors (like level and gear,) so the end result is still a cycle.
Third, shitty battles are going to happen anyway -- even without the system trying to serve up an appropriate challenge. For example, there are some truly epic down-to-the-wire overtime rounds I've had in TF2. This can only happen in a match where both teams were nearly balanced in skill. Similarly in PVE, some the most memorable fights were the ones where your 25 man kills the boss right as he hard-enrages, or when I was the tank and last man standing when I killed the boss. The fights where we wipe (too hard) or where we facerolled (too easy) the boss just automatically happen on account of players not always playing at exactly the same skill.
But the good fights -- the really close ones; the memorable ones -- happen most frequently when the boss is perfectly suited to the raid's gear and skill level.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
We have been over items, and individual monsters, mobs and bosses, timers etc...But, there is one thing I would like to touch on before letting this thread die...The Player and Spawning. Rather, The penalties for player death and methods of player Re-spawning.
Should players have ghosts? What about on the spot or near to goal resurrections? Should death penalties be harsher for PvP or PVE; or consistent across both? Is loosing a portion of experience fair? How do you feel about loosing items? How should all this work?
Plenty of good questions in there to address that didn't get looked at here in any depth, yet.
We have been over items, and individual monsters, mobs and bosses, timers etc...But, there is one thing I would like to touch on before letting this thread die...The Player and Spawning. Rather, The penalties for player death and methods of player Re-spawning.
Should players have ghosts? What about on the spot or near to goal resurrections? Should death penalties be harsher for PvP or PVE; or consistent across both? Is loosing a portion of experience fair? How do you feel about loosing items? How should all this work?
Plenty of good questions in there to address that didn't get looked at here in any depth, yet.
Ghosts part may fun but i don't think it should , just normal return to nearest town are best lol.
As for death penalties , i don't think lost experience are good idea. It make game pointless longer and annoying.
item dura lost or broken sound better.
Repair cost and new item purchase are good for in game economy gold sink.
Reasonable consume are better than lost something.
I can understand experience loss from a death, granting it seems fair and is useful. If I die before reaching a next level. It seems to make sense that my character would not deserve to keep as much experience as it would had I kept it alive. For sure I don't like loosing all of my experience earned between leveling if my character dies. And, I don't like de-leveling if I die to much.
But, I think I would rather loose a little experience from a single death or two, in order to show me that I am out of my depth then to have to repair or replace an item. Earning a little experience back seems easier on me then having to give up some of my earned wealth. But, others might feel they would rather loose experience and have to fix a few items.
I think I might most appreciate a death screen option of what to loose and what to keep. If I can see an item is near breaking because I forgot to repair it and my most recent death will push it over the edge and make the repair of the item cost a lot more or force my hand in getting an all new version of that item, I might elect to loose experience instead. If my items were full repair, and it was a lag death near gaining a level, I might want to take the penalty to my repair status. I feel like I would enjoy having the option in any case.
I can understand experience loss from a death, granting it seems fair and is useful. If I die before reaching a next level. It seems to make sense that my character would not deserve to keep as much experience as it would had I kept it alive. For sure I don't like loosing all of my experience earned between leveling if my character dies. And, I don't like de-leveling if I die to much.
But, I think I would rather loose a little experience from a single death or two, in order to show me that I am out of my depth then to have to repair or replace an item. Earning a little experience back seems easier on me then having to give up some of my earned wealth. But, others might feel they would rather loose experience and have to fix a few items.
I think I might most appreciate a death screen option of what to loose and what to keep. If I can see an item is near breaking because I forgot to repair it and my most recent death will push it over the edge and make the repair of the item cost a lot more or force my hand in getting an all new version of that item, I might elect to loose experience instead. If my items were full repair, and it was a lag death near gaining a level, I might want to take the penalty to my repair status. I feel like I would enjoy having the option in any case.
In some old game , "little experience" take 2-4 days or weeks to fill, and in those time , you drop behind people in your group. lol
But more important
Since designer still often use old level system , i think lost exp are troublesome
with current quest hubs MMOs design , lost a lots exp can broken game design. They design only 3 quest for 1 level, if you die 2 time then you don't have enough exp for next level (design broken).
You can still play and have fun with weaker gears , but have to add more labor than design aren't good.
Just my personal though , the "hard" in case of broken/lost gears are more are more than casual exp lost. And it fair for everyone than just exp lost , it mean the more power you hold (power of your gears lol) the more you lost when you die (gears broken).
It give player more option to chose when face challenge , face it with normal gears (less loss) or face it with powerful gears (great loss)
specific monsters on a area spawn on some invisible circle with some area
after every x hours, the system get the position of the monsters and their initial position and do some average to see how much they moved from their starting position (even if the position they are now is still inside the invisible circle).
the game then after it, move the circle position a little based on how much the monsters moved from their original position.
if some monster die before the hours run out, the position that he died counts as where he was, to calculate the averare I said before.
And, that is proposed towards the ends of roving mobs?
Your talking about spawn area's and roaming ranges....
If you have 3 monsters spawn anywhere within a 3m sq. game space area (as a mob) and they all have a roaming range from origin of 3m on Random...the average more then likely would have them staying in roughly the same spot. And if they have no set roaming range then a day later, the newb area can be covered in high level monsters.
Even if you take the maximum distance one moved away from it's origin and move the center of the spawn area to that point. You end up with a spawn area that wiggles over the course of a few rather then actually going anywhere. There would have to be a system in place that moves the spawn area to a random location within it's own diameter of the previous location from the edge of the previous location. And it would have to re-assign the spawn area a lot more frequently then every few hours to see anything interesting come about.
It's doable if I understand what you mean by that right. but you need a controller that does not rely on what the mob may do. or you will rarely end up with a result you can predict to any degree, beyond doing nothing (relatively) or doing far more then it should have.
We have been over items, and individual monsters, mobs and bosses, timers etc...But, there is one thing I would like to touch on before letting this thread die...The Player and Spawning. Rather, The penalties for player death and methods of player Re-spawning.
Should players have ghosts? What about on the spot or near to goal resurrections? Should death penalties be harsher for PvP or PVE; or consistent across both? Is loosing a portion of experience fair? How do you feel about loosing items? How should all this work?
Plenty of good questions in there to address that didn't get looked at here in any depth, yet.
Apart from resetting the encounter (an obvious necessity of failure,) any additional penalty doesn't really add to a game.
To zoom way back, the evolutionary trait of "enjoying skill improvement" is advantageous. Which is why certain species derive pleasure from things like play-fighting. Which is why spending more time practicing tends to be more enjoyable to spending time experiencing a lengthy penalty.
So basically any penalty that turns gameplay off for any significant length of time is going to make the game less fun for most players. And while penalties that focus on gameplay (or involve completely new gameplay) are definitely workable, they're definitely not required for a fun game, except for the reset.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Comments
It's not that I think you are wrong about this, it's that I think you are too focused on this one element of a much larger picture.
Even if you engineer the perfect difficulty that is right on the edge of my personal sweet spot, if you keep giving it to me, it gets bland. An MMO needs texture, it needs punctuation. To get great memories, you need contrast, you need moments that stand out from the background routine.
Look at this way: good, memorable battles are the loot of the exploration side of game.
Seems like things are getting a bit off topic (it's about spawn systems, not how people should be treated and why). I don't want this to degrade into arguing over weather players deserve to be included regardless of merit. That is not what this thread is intended for. Lets please try to steer this back on topic. Because, as it stands it is using spawn system discussion as a plank to walk off into an ocean of other stuff.
I prefer the spawn type where I can control when I spawn something and get on with my life.
I had spawns with a respawn time. I hate respawns with a window. I hate spawns that there is only one of at a time which cuts off how many people can kill it.
First, the sweet spot is a range of difficulty and not precisely the same difficulty each time. Looks like someone threw together a convenient chart of it recently for some Firefall post: image. It's a little weird to graph it as Difficulty vs. Skill, but it's basically the same idea.
Second, in RPGs there will naturally be a cycle to the challenge. You'll fight mobs which will progressively get harder, then you'll level and they'll be very easy for a while, but as you keep progressing and fighting harder mobs it gets tough again, then you level...Even with a system dynamically adjusting difficulty, this is going to be the case because that system will likely be driven by one factor (like level) while the player's strength is the result of many factors (like level and gear,) so the end result is still a cycle.
Third, shitty battles are going to happen anyway -- even without the system trying to serve up an appropriate challenge. For example, there are some truly epic down-to-the-wire overtime rounds I've had in TF2. This can only happen in a match where both teams were nearly balanced in skill. Similarly in PVE, some the most memorable fights were the ones where your 25 man kills the boss right as he hard-enrages, or when I was the tank and last man standing when I killed the boss. The fights where we wipe (too hard) or where we facerolled (too easy) the boss just automatically happen on account of players not always playing at exactly the same skill.
But the good fights -- the really close ones; the memorable ones -- happen most frequently when the boss is perfectly suited to the raid's gear and skill level.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
We have been over items, and individual monsters, mobs and bosses, timers etc...But, there is one thing I would like to touch on before letting this thread die...The Player and Spawning. Rather, The penalties for player death and methods of player Re-spawning.
Should players have ghosts? What about on the spot or near to goal resurrections? Should death penalties be harsher for PvP or PVE; or consistent across both? Is loosing a portion of experience fair? How do you feel about loosing items? How should all this work?
Plenty of good questions in there to address that didn't get looked at here in any depth, yet.
Ghosts part may fun but i don't think it should , just normal return to nearest town are best lol.
As for death penalties , i don't think lost experience are good idea. It make game pointless longer and annoying.
item dura lost or broken sound better.
Repair cost and new item purchase are good for in game economy gold sink.
Reasonable consume are better than lost something.
I can understand experience loss from a death, granting it seems fair and is useful. If I die before reaching a next level. It seems to make sense that my character would not deserve to keep as much experience as it would had I kept it alive. For sure I don't like loosing all of my experience earned between leveling if my character dies. And, I don't like de-leveling if I die to much.
But, I think I would rather loose a little experience from a single death or two, in order to show me that I am out of my depth then to have to repair or replace an item. Earning a little experience back seems easier on me then having to give up some of my earned wealth. But, others might feel they would rather loose experience and have to fix a few items.
I think I might most appreciate a death screen option of what to loose and what to keep. If I can see an item is near breaking because I forgot to repair it and my most recent death will push it over the edge and make the repair of the item cost a lot more or force my hand in getting an all new version of that item, I might elect to loose experience instead. If my items were full repair, and it was a lag death near gaining a level, I might want to take the penalty to my repair status. I feel like I would enjoy having the option in any case.
In some old game , "little experience" take 2-4 days or weeks to fill, and in those time , you drop behind people in your group. lol
But more important
Since designer still often use old level system , i think lost exp are troublesome
with current quest hubs MMOs design , lost a lots exp can broken game design. They design only 3 quest for 1 level, if you die 2 time then you don't have enough exp for next level (design broken).
You can still play and have fun with weaker gears , but have to add more labor than design aren't good.
Just my personal though , the "hard" in case of broken/lost gears are more are more than casual exp lost. And it fair for everyone than just exp lost , it mean the more power you hold (power of your gears lol) the more you lost when you die (gears broken).
It give player more option to chose when face challenge , face it with normal gears (less loss) or face it with powerful gears (great loss)
maybe something like this could work
specific monsters on a area spawn on some invisible circle with some area
after every x hours, the system get the position of the monsters and their initial position and do some average to see how much they moved from their starting position (even if the position they are now is still inside the invisible circle).
the game then after it, move the circle position a little based on how much the monsters moved from their original position.
if some monster die before the hours run out, the position that he died counts as where he was, to calculate the averare I said before.
And, that is proposed towards the ends of roving mobs?
Your talking about spawn area's and roaming ranges....
If you have 3 monsters spawn anywhere within a 3m sq. game space area (as a mob) and they all have a roaming range from origin of 3m on Random...the average more then likely would have them staying in roughly the same spot. And if they have no set roaming range then a day later, the newb area can be covered in high level monsters.
Even if you take the maximum distance one moved away from it's origin and move the center of the spawn area to that point. You end up with a spawn area that wiggles over the course of a few rather then actually going anywhere. There would have to be a system in place that moves the spawn area to a random location within it's own diameter of the previous location from the edge of the previous location. And it would have to re-assign the spawn area a lot more frequently then every few hours to see anything interesting come about.
It's doable if I understand what you mean by that right. but you need a controller that does not rely on what the mob may do. or you will rarely end up with a result you can predict to any degree, beyond doing nothing (relatively) or doing far more then it should have.
Apart from resetting the encounter (an obvious necessity of failure,) any additional penalty doesn't really add to a game.
To zoom way back, the evolutionary trait of "enjoying skill improvement" is advantageous. Which is why certain species derive pleasure from things like play-fighting. Which is why spending more time practicing tends to be more enjoyable to spending time experiencing a lengthy penalty.
So basically any penalty that turns gameplay off for any significant length of time is going to make the game less fun for most players. And while penalties that focus on gameplay (or involve completely new gameplay) are definitely workable, they're definitely not required for a fun game, except for the reset.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver