Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Dungeons in MMOs are lacking
metalhead980
Member Posts: 2,658
Ever play a MMO and walk into a dungeon that consisted of lifeless boxed rooms with mobs that were lifeless?
Mobs wouldn't come in packs they would just attack one by one like robots, then at the end you would fight some horribly designed boss that is usually a tank and spank.
I don't know how developers could release a game with rubish like that.
Out of every MMO I have played only one has done dungeons right and that's WoW.
In WoW dungeons you have cool scripted bosses with phases, pretty architecture large mob pulls that need to be crowd controled.
Is blizzard the only company smart enough to not release bland shitty dungeons?
Even if dungeons aren't the main focus in a game they should atleast be well made.
I haven't found one MMO that could compete with WoWs dungeon designs it makes me sad really.
I have moved on and no longer play Wow I just Wish a developer could get their shit together and actually make good dungeons for a change.
PLaying: EvE, Ryzom
Waiting For: Earthrise, Perpetuum
Comments
Yeh in most mmorpgs they are pretty crap like in SWG every dungeon in that game seems to use the same character models and textures and alot of the time in like the Legacy quests it's the same bunker and cave over and over again lol. What amazed me about WOW was The Dead Mines because usually a level 20 instance is really crap but the first instance I went into in WOW it felt better than other mmorpgs end game ones.
When you blew the door down and you saw the giant boat it was like "woah" just so amazing. Infact the whole Human starting area to Westfall and Redridge and then duskwood and fianlly STV was just amazingly well done.
I only ever played 5 man group instances in the game though because I hate raids and group content just feels perfect.
I'd like to see puzzles, riddles, traps, and mazes in dungeons. Some stuff that would make you think.
and I agree. 5 or 10 man dungeons in WoW are really fun.
------------------------------
Meow
Yeah, got to agree. WoW really doesn't do too much that other games don't, but their dungeons are a hell of a lot of fun. Each and every one of them is memorable (well, except Stockades).
I think the problem is developers haven't knuckled down and admitted that they actually have to TOP WoW when they release dungeons. Instead they try to be 'different' from WoW, where different usually means 'shoddy.'
In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.
-Thomas Jefferson
DDO's can be pretty fun.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
While I cant speak of raids after the expansion in wow
The problem with scripted raids is you just do what your told to do theres no real strategy.
If I only had to do them once it would have been great, but having to do the same script over and over was a tad boring. Although tank and spank is rather boring too, so i guess the real problem is having to do the same thing every week for 6 months. Maybe they could add multiple scripts per boss? It would at least be different every week, but I assume the websites would eventually post them all or a mod would figure it out for you.
Own, Mine, Defend, Attack, 24/7
Unfortunately, most dungeons have to cater to the lowest common denominator of player. The more puzzles, traps, and such in any given dungeon, the more complex and difficult that dungeon becomes. With a few exceptions, every dungeon needs to be made so that every player has a chance of clearing it.
To think of it another way... remember the simplest, most straightforward dungeon you've ever seen? Have you died there? Yes? Well, it obviously wasn't too easy then, was it?
If you compare the difficulty of a mmo dungeon encounter to the difficulty of a 1-player adventure-type game encounter... I'm actually often impressed by how well they stack up, considering that things need to be toned down to account for...
-multiple players
-of varying skill levels
-with no experience playing together before
Computers can do anything. Just have the players set the difficulty setting before they enter. LDON did
I had a blast in LDON dungeons. One of the few things SOE did right after booting Verant out of the EQ picture. They were somewhat random each time you enterered, you had a time limit to get your bonus points to buy gear, they had bosses/rare spawns for loot.
The things that doesn't make sense is how the security of every dungeon is really low. No matter how sophisticated the inhabitants. I can understand rabid dogs not having more than a few aware of your presence at a time as you sneak in. Othertimes, everything should run to the entrance as if they are being invaded. That is a true raid, this concept of "OHH we will make the Trash have more HP and hit harder so they need 40 people instead of 5" is retarded.
Big Bosses dungeons should just have MORE smarter minions, not the same amount but magically tougher. Oh yah, they get an aura from being in the dungeon, I got it. *Rolls eyes*
I want to trip an alarm on a dungeon and have the entire ghost castle (minus the boss and his guards) come looking for us.
Maybe more of a FPS atmosphere while keeping the semi-turn based (you have 1.5-3 seconds to take your turn depending on the game)/casual combat system.
I think there are too many dungeons and too much emphasis on the instanced dungeon crawling that we are forced to do over and over again. Less dungeons, more seamless world.
Tried: LotR, CoH, AoC, WAR, Jumpgate Classic
Played: SWG, Guild Wars, WoW
Playing: Eve Online, Counter-strike
Loved: Star Wars Galaxies
Waiting for: Earthrise, Guild Wars 2, anything sandbox.
DDO has some great dungeons, filled with traps, puzzles, nice architecture, and decent boss AI. If you want to do dungeon crawling...DDO fulfills that desire in spades.
EQ1 also has some very awesome raid dungeons, which some say are the best in the industry.
Vanguard has some impressive dungeons, but not so impressive boss AI.
WoW's dungeons are good, but there are other good dungeons out there as well.
Oh yeah... It's a huge game breaker for me. It makes no sense and completely breaks the idea of a living world. When I see that, I just lose my interest in playing. (I mean foes that are considered semi-intelligent and such should fight more in packs or react appropriately. I don't mind the problem described in the above quote happening with mobs that are considered independent and stupid, such as insects. However, even passive ones should react by running.)
Totally agreed.
Not only in just how monsters react but in the factor that most dungeons are sparse in mmos.
Now I play mabinogi alot, and the dungeons and designs tend to suck (No real.....look to them)
Just bland.
Unfortunately though this is how it has to be for now.
You must understand a dungeon will only be as good as the game. These places core mechanic is fighting, so it has to be sparse yet decorated (for ambience).
Thats why dungeons suck. The games we have now are not up to the current artistic level that are easily done now (look at ryzom and how the world looks, can we say OMGOSHSAUCE, and that game is ancient).
Weather a game decides to make a dungeon, instanced, non-instanced, a raid, solo, small group, quest based, a grind or whatever the developers decide, The dungeons still need to be designed well.
If a developer decides to have dungeons at all they need to be well made and not something thrown together in ten minutes.
Even If a game is PVP focused if the game has dungeons they should be well designed be challenging and be immersive.
If i pick up a game box or read features off the game site if that game lists dungeons as one of its features they sure as hell better not be four box rooms with three mobs and a chest.
PLaying: EvE, Ryzom
Waiting For: Earthrise, Perpetuum
I agree, very few games have entertaining dungeons. Only WOW and DDO and partially VG from my experience. Small group PVE should be the focus in theme park level based games, poor dungeons are simply inexcusable. Even EVE where the focus lies in something entirely different has decent complexes topping many linear pve games, where is the logic. Stupid kill X quests are laughable excuse for PVE content, if you are doing linear PVE game, at least make it interesting gameplay wise in that department.
Subscribtions: EVE, SWTOR WOW, WAR, DDO, VG, AOC, COV, FFXI, GW, RFO, Aion
+plenty of F2P, betas, trials
Female Dwarf player: WOW, VG, WAR, DDO
.
Due to the recent economic crisis and spending cuts the light at the end of the tunnel was turned off. Sincerely, God.
Yup dungeon design along with everything else seems to have gone down hill. I was just thinking this the other day. My only disagreement with the OP is on using WOW as the comparison standard. WOW has a couple decent dungeons, but they come with a big huge negative at least for me. They are all instanced.The king of dungeons and raids is EQ1. Every current developer could do worse than spend some time in just about any EQ1 dungeon. Dungeon development and raids are one of the few things SOE actually does right.
Places like Runnyeye, lower guk, upper guk, Howling stones, Befallen, Splitpaw, Blackburrow, Kaesora, The Hole, crystal caverns just to name a few. I could probably make a whole paragraph of complex very fun to crawl EQ1 dungeons. These are all very complex places to go very easy to get lost in with traps, ledges that can be fallen off of to lower levels countless switchbacks and convoluted dead ends. They run the gamut of levels from low to high. All non instanced and for the most part very challenging to do when level appropriate.
Eq and eq2 dungeons are very well done in my opinion and are not instanced what so ever except from certain expansions like lost dungeons of norrath expansion in eq1 I believe it was the first to start instance dungeons but I may be wrong and they where well done for its time in my opinion.
Dungeons and dragons online have pretty good dungeons with puzzles and all, lord of the rings online has awesome dungeons, the monsters feel alot more epic when you fight them, but there mostly instanced to but its still fun regardless, im still low level so im not sure if all of them are instanced.
Guild wars has good dungeons to but it still felt lacking somewhere im not sure where to pinpoint it personally. I always felt wow dungeons where medicore all show no real fun gameplay but it could be just my tastes, ive heard ryzom has good dungeons I have not seen them personally.
So you see there are still many mmorpgs with good dungeons, oh and cox have gangs of mobs coming towards you it isnt really pull one or 2 at a time, but there instance missions are extremely repetitive so not alot of variety in environment more variety in enemies though.
I would say that todays mmo's lack creativeness... but I tell you this that Asherons Call's dungeons were the most outstanding dungeons of any game i have played... not only were mobs roaming , they also had static ones, but they had keys to find to open certain doors, they were also multi layered and not just single levels.. you also had to jump over pits and hit levers and make sure you didnt fall in acid or flames, they also had things like certain tiles to jump to and hit timed levers to open different parts of the dungeon.
you also pretty much had no mini map that showed you what mobs were there... to me the danger of these dungeons freaked me out like no other because you could lose your body there and not get back your favorite death items... muahahahaha those were scary times .... they also had dungeons that you would have wave after wave of bugs called Olthois that would smack the crap outta you!!!!! come some of you remember these dungeons i know you do... you could actually get lost in them... those were the days!!!!!
Eq is pretty similar to that actually.
That is not a problem with scripted raids (or dungeons). That is a problem with repetition. Going through any scripted dungeon the first time (or even 2nd or third) is great. 100x better than any tank-n-spank.
The issue is repetition and you cannot get away from that because it is too expensive to build dungeons that you do not need to repeat.
And I think even with the repetition, WOW still beat everyone else in dungeon design.
I'll cast my vote for Dungeons and Dragons Online as well.
Of course, that is essentially the entirety of the game and, perhaps because of their 'full' design, the dungeons are limited in number.
Still have fond memories of that game though.
Combining the nature of DDO's dungeon crawling with a more open world and you might have something...but that is another discussion.
I used to fear dungeons in Everquest for my life!
I would never even think about venturing into them without a compentent party, torch, and rations in case I somehow got lost.
Today's dungeons lack that element of adventure, fear, sense of being trapped, lost, and cold and naked in the dark.
I'm in complete opposition.
When I get a quest to assault the emperor's fortress with 5 people and kill him. Then I'm told this will be an extremely hard task, but glory awaits me. I expect hard. If I get there with my team only to find the whole damn place camped, and a line of people waiting to quickly kill the boss; that just ruined every single bit of immersion I could possibly have in the game.
Having a mostly seamless word works great for sandbox MMOs with generic quest and grind spots. Instancing is great for Themepark games with a good massive storyline that immerses players. Instancing provides a specific challenge for a certain number of people. Instanced dungeons contain scripted events, cutscenes, perfectly placed enemies, and lot's of strategy. Outdoor group quest are typiclaly lame and dumbed down, and when people find them too hard they form ridiculously large groups that makes it far too easy.
I play for challenge, and I like grouping with some strangers while I play. I don't play to chat while I mindlessly kill mobs and power myself up at ridiculous pseeds.
I have never played EQ but I'm sure DAOC copied their formula for dungeons. Even though multiplle groups could enter one dungeon, these dungeons were usually designed to get progressivly harder the deeper your group ventured, till you reach a point where you need a raid to finish it. Most of the dungeons in DAOC, I never saw the end. These were the only open dungeons I liked.
When I played a true instance dungeon in WoW, I was sold on the game for the next 3 years. Istance dungeons in WoW were the only reason I played that game for more than a year. they had so much thought put into each pull, each corner, and each boss fight.
After WoW, I realized there is no reason to make an instanced dungeon unless you are going to add cutscenes, patrols, etc.
Other games with good instances were AOC, CoH form my personal experience. AOC's only downside were the classes we played. The classe sin the game dumbed down the strategy to some awesome boss fights and great pulls. CoH had dynamic mobs with personality, and interesting scriptes.
Exactly they lack adventuring, the emotions of being in a real dungeon, and the look. What would you rather have? Some very linear dungeon with one storyline to play through or many very large dungeons non instanced with mulitiple parts and mulitple story lines, and you meet people on the way.
LOL
When i was playing EQ long time, the experience was NOTHING of the sort you are talking about.
Usually, it is about taking a number on the boss, wait around chatting and kill the occasionally trash spawn. And then hopefully when you get to kill the boss, whatever you are coming for will drop.
The only fear is something will jump the queue killing the mob and you have to argue with him.
WoW dungeons are pretty lame, they're a rehashed design if you're referring to the non-instance ones. If you're referring to the 'instances' as dungeons then ok there is a couple that are fine but there are others that are just blatantly randomly placed groups of mobs like Gnomeregan.
I agree with you completely in that I to wish developers would put some thought behind there dungeons. What I dont agree with is how WoW got it "right" and no one else didnt. If you go into a dungeon unbias then you can see that they are almost all alike in one aspect or another. Now if WoW had raid bosses that where NOT scripted enough that it was down to "at 65% do blah blah at 35% do blah blah" but rather switched up phases, like one time phase 2 happens at 80% but the next run it happens at 30% I could agree. Also add in that the "phases" never happen in order. Then at least you need to react to whats going on rather than just doing the same thing till "this happens" ect. If it was random it would be much much better imo.
All that said, I have found diffrent dungeons in diffrent games to be verry fun while others to be about as bland as you can get. That includes WoW. Magisters Terrace for example was alot of fun for me so I'm not completely ripping on WoW, just pointing out that WoW is not much diffrent if at all dungeon wise than most other MMO's out there.