On a more serious note, MMO players generally won't stick with a game they can't "beat.'
Blizzard simplified WOW'S raiding so it would appeal to more than 10% of the playerbase.
So the real question for Pantheons devs is how small of a long term playerbase do they wish to appeal to?
(I'm thinking the Wildstar team had some 2nd thoughts on this seeing how things all turned out.)
Hopefully, I'm not too far off base here. I don't know about other games, but I have to agree with Wildstar dungeons. I actually ended up hating the dungeons in that game. Too hard to a fault (beatable, but sheesh!). The entire team unless spec'd the hell and back ended up jumping, dodging, and hiding in most of the boss fights. Kind of felt like being a teams was simply just a requirement, but otherwise didn't really make a lot of sense. What's the point of a tank if the entire team is CONSTANTLY jumping, dodging, and being one-shotted while the tank is taunting? Or a someone attempting to provide heals and/or buffs but the moment they try to use one of those skills, they're one-shotted or destroyed by adds. They were better than GW2 dungeons though.
Any boss that one shots you is what I call Bad design hard, developers taking the lazy way. Even the most squishy casters should have enough defense to recover from a mistake.
Wildstar - I'll admit the game wasn't cheaply made, but the design decision to project a radius on the ground was simply wrong. I understand they were trying to be unique, but failed when it came to group content. Some people got it some didn't. It was a bad idea !
There is cause and effect to everything in life. Trying to be unique is good, but look at the consequence's before you implement !!!.......Wildstar would be a bad example for a discussion on hard.
Dark souls is from zero to hero in 50 hours, with a few hours between every new boss and there is no real penalty for death. The gameplay is built on the premise that you will die, repeatedly. Leveling in pantheon is lengthy, you will kill a lot of regular mobs and there is a big penalty for death. Its built on death hurting and therefore should be avoided.
If you did the mistakes that devs did in the alpha gameplay video for pantheon while playing dark souls they would have died repeatedly.
Iselin: And the next person who says "but it's a business, they need to make money" can just go fuck yourself.
I have a "slight problem" with the OP's post. Dark Souls - check; mmo - ? The issue being "perception".
As Shaigh says above: "Dark souls is from zero to hero in 50 hours, with a few hours between every new boss and there is no real penalty for death. The gameplay is built on the premise that you will die, repeatedly."
There is a given amount of gameplay; that takes a certain amount of time; and the game costs a sum of money.
In a subscription based mmo publsihers want you to keep playing because they want you to keep paying. And sadly making things "hard" - as in "time consuming" - was the norm pretty much from day 1. WoW was easy mode as well with far less of the waiting for a boat, long - seriously long - runs from A to B; inordinately long respawn times; corpse recoveries; hours spent assembling enough people to run a "dungeons". And of course that is why we got normal, hard and legendary modes of the same content - quicker and cheaper than making new content. Time consuming - in this sense - doesn't mean "hard" or "challenging" it just means boring.
And at the end of the day the padding ruins the game. It would be like dividing Captain America Civil War up into 3 films - each padded out with adverts and trailers - so that we have to pay more. (I could have said The Hobbit)
Hopefully companies are moving away from "padding". And with some RNG thrown in as well it be harder to google as well (another reason why early mmos were harder as well of course, no walk throughs, but that genie is out of the bottle).
I hate when people don't get the point. Two totally different games. Yes, you cant get any different in comparison.
THE POINT.....Hard, causes Vigor. Hard makes you want more. Hard makes you research, and causes discussion......Best of all Hard makes you keep playing !
How come 75% get the point right off the bat, yet 25% are sooooo closed minded ?
HARD is an objective term,doesn't mean much. I prefer a challenge but i want more in my game world than just grass,trees and mobs ,i want a living world and a world which we truly RP in. I also want lots of systems that you would expect to see in a world from crafting to trading to all sorts of ideas.
The reason why so many if not all of these mmorpg's have become boring so quickly is because they offer nothing more than players playing to gain levels.BDO comes along and just because it has some automated node system,people think they made leaps and bounds and all a sudden a great game has emerged.Well they ruined or did everything else pretty much crap,so much for any improvement on the genre.
We need to see "longevity" in our games and no,pvp and some node system is not going to cut it.This is why i am usually satisfied with VERY slow group leveling.I feel a key is to incorporate lots of crafting,be it gardening or some sort of research crafting it all adds up to living in a world instead of just chasing levels or pvp.
Quests is where i feel problems arise,the idea has been way over done,everyone has played a few thousand boring quests by now,we need more depth and creativity with them and NOT make quests the sole reason for login.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
I dont think there has been a game that has had a hard group game since vanguard - and even that was only hard for a very few bosses required for the epics.
edit: note that I said group game. Raids are a different story.
For me, I prefer some kind of loss for the risk vs reward factor.. make me pay for my mistakes!
NEWS FLASH!"A bank was robbed the other day and a man opened fire on the customers being held hostage. One customer zig-zag sprinted until he found cover. When questioned later he explained that he was a hardcore gamer and knew just what to do!" Download my music for free! I release several albums per month as part of project "Thee Untitled" . .. some video game music remixes and cover songs done with instruments in there as well! http://theeuntitled.bandcamp.com/Check out my roleplaying blog, collection of fictional short stories, and fantasy series... updated on a blog for now until I am finished!https://childrenfromtheheavensbelow.blogspot.com/Watch me game on occasion or make music... https://www.twitch.tv/spoontheeuntitled and subscribe! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUvqULn678VrF3OasgnbsyA
Wasn't that what Wildstar was supposed to be, really hard, you needed others to succeed, only for the Hardcore? Isn't that also what caused it to fail?
Edit: i also don't buy it was good design vs bad design. Most people couldn't beat it or it took too long hence why they left.
Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.
Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.
Wasn't that what Wildstar was supposed to be, really hard, you needed others to succeed, only for the Hardcore? Isn't that also what caused it to fail?
Wildstar failed because of dissonance.
Their art style was aimed at 10 year olds Their combat was aimed at 17 year olds Their endgame PvE was aimed at 40 year olds
At the end of the day they made a game that almost everyone hated.
Yeah McQuaid, listen to that same "hardcore" minority that demanded Vanguard be "hardcore" then left you high and dry. I love multiple failures, bring it on.
I personally wouldn't consider Vanguard hardcore. Its truly sad though that one failure is enough to condemn the guy who was lead design on the game that made this genre a thing.
If the encounter feels unbeatable, people just won't play. Like ESO nurfing some dungeons because they have a low completion rate. Design a game that's to hard for none mini-maxer's and it gets nurfed or struggles to keep a large player base. Which means the game doesn't make enough money to support it's staff. Good luck with that.
I'd argue a low completion rate is exactly what you'd expect from a hard dungeon. It's sad how "hard" now means something everyone or the vast majority will complete. That's not hard.
For me something hard is somethign which requires everything you got, not just your IQ. People fall like flies. Only a few win. The rest are beaten firmly and sent back in defeat. No participation trophies.
For me the quality of a agme is directly proprtional to whether it lets me lose. The best games don't care two s***s about me if I lose. They shovel me up and they throw me out. THAT I respect. THAT makes me interested. The rest of them are just whores. They only want yoru moeny.
I agree with the above poster. One shots are not a good way to make an mmo hard.
This is the best example I can think of and it just happens to be from Vanilla World of Warcraft. Since I'm playing that game now, its fresh in my memory.
With all the servers I've been on in way so many years. EVERYONE seems to do dungeons at the lowest level possible. This in it's self gets the groups wiped. Sure it can be done, but heavy coordination is needed. After all the classics style of mmos were designed that way.
.... Its truly sad though that one failure is enough to condemn the guy who was lead design on the game that made this genre a thing.
Brad was part of EQ, sure, but Vanguard will forever haunt him !
The original design for Vanguard was hardcore, but it became increasingly watered-down as development progressed.
Vanguard was such a mess that it narrowly avoided being cancelled completely. SOE stepped in at the last minute and saved the game from oblivion.
The Vanguard launch was an epic disaster that the game NEVER recovered from, even though the game itself was pretty good after a few years of bug fixing and tweaking.
.... Its truly sad though that one failure is enough to condemn the guy who was lead design on the game that made this genre a thing.
LMAO !
Vanguard did not "make this genre a thing". If anything, it almost killed the genre...
The original design for Vanguard was hardcore, but it became increasingly watered-down as development progressed.
Vanguard was such a mess that it narrowly avoided being cancelled completely. SOE stepped in at the last minute and saved the game from oblivion.
The Vanguard launch was an epic disaster that the game NEVER recovered from, even though the game itself was pretty good after a few years of bug fixing and tweaking.
I think Vanguard would have done much better if they did not release the game until they had an expansion in the works ready for the people when they reached the endgame.. but instead they made a 'trial island' in hopes of grabbing new people... really stupid idea when their world was amazing compared to trial island, it should have been some kind of endgame island.
NEWS FLASH!"A bank was robbed the other day and a man opened fire on the customers being held hostage. One customer zig-zag sprinted until he found cover. When questioned later he explained that he was a hardcore gamer and knew just what to do!" Download my music for free! I release several albums per month as part of project "Thee Untitled" . .. some video game music remixes and cover songs done with instruments in there as well! http://theeuntitled.bandcamp.com/Check out my roleplaying blog, collection of fictional short stories, and fantasy series... updated on a blog for now until I am finished!https://childrenfromtheheavensbelow.blogspot.com/Watch me game on occasion or make music... https://www.twitch.tv/spoontheeuntitled and subscribe! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUvqULn678VrF3OasgnbsyA
On a more serious note, MMO players generally won't stick with a game they can't "beat.'
Blizzard simplified WOW'S raiding so it would appeal to more than 10% of the playerbase.
So the real question for Pantheons devs is how small of a long term playerbase do they wish to appeal to?
(I'm thinking the Wildstar team had some 2nd thoughts on this seeing how things all turned out.)
What are you basing the statement on that MMO players won't stick with a game they can't beat? The vast majority of people playing MMOs up to and including WoW were not "beating" those games, yet they continued playing them. By WoTLK, still less than 10% of their playerbase even cleared the final raid content.
Kyleran is correct. MMORPGs for the past 12 years or so have been designed to get people to the end not to prevent them from getting to the end. If Pantheon wants to repeat the mistakes of the past, it's free to do so if it feels it can sustain itself on the limited audience it would attract.
-- Whammy - a 64x64 miniRPG - RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right? - FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
On a more serious note, MMO players generally won't stick with a game they can't "beat.'
Blizzard simplified WOW'S raiding so it would appeal to more than 10% of the playerbase.
So the real question for Pantheons devs is how small of a long term playerbase do they wish to appeal to?
(I'm thinking the Wildstar team had some 2nd thoughts on this seeing how things all turned out.)
What are you basing the statement on that MMO players won't stick with a game they can't beat? The vast majority of people playing MMOs up to and including WoW were not "beating" those games, yet they continued playing them. By WoTLK, still less than 10% of their playerbase even cleared the final raid content.
Kyleran is correct. MMORPGs for the past 12 years or so have been designed to get people to the end not to prevent them from getting to the end. If Pantheon wants to repeat the mistakes of the past, it's free to do so if it feels it can sustain itself on the limited audience it would attract.
Thats nothing but semantical nonsense. MMORPGs were hard, and people didn't complete all available content, including in WoW when it was at its peak. You can argue all day that they were designed to get people to the end, but the fact remains that most people did NOT accomplish everything.
There was a carrot, and a stick. Now its just more carrot with little to no stick.
.... Its truly sad though that one failure is enough to condemn the guy who was lead design on the game that made this genre a thing.
LMAO !
Vanguard did not "make this genre a thing". If anything, it almost killed the genre...
The original design for Vanguard was hardcore, but it became increasingly watered-down as development progressed.
Vanguard was such a mess that it narrowly avoided being cancelled completely. SOE stepped in at the last minute and saved the game from oblivion.
The Vanguard launch was an epic disaster that the game NEVER recovered from, even though the game itself was pretty good after a few years of bug fixing and tweaking.
I think Vanguard would have done much better if they did not release the game until they had an expansion in the works ready for the people when they reached the endgame.. but instead they made a 'trial island' in hopes of grabbing new people... really stupid idea when their world was amazing compared to trial island, it should have been some kind of endgame island.
Lol, no doubt Vanguard would have done better if they could have afforded to forego launch, but not for an expansion; They needed to finish the game period. Expansions were an afterthought.
And I completely agree with @SpottyGekko , Vanguard was much more akin to EQ in beta. Everyone was kind of surprised with how drastically things changed at launch, especially once SOE took over.
Ive gone back to EQ like 5 times, and wow twice, but at this point Vanguard is the only game I really have the itch to play. Sadly, no longer possible.
Wasn't that what Wildstar was supposed to be, really hard, you needed others to succeed, only for the Hardcore? Isn't that also what caused it to fail?
Edit: i also don't buy it was good design vs bad design. Most people couldn't beat it or it took too long hence why they left.
It was bad design. I didnt get very far in Wildstar because it sucked. Only good design decision it had going was its housing. Combat was terrible and spammy. Everything had its freaking floor pattern! And for what? Sure, group play was tough but staring at the ground playing an ADHD version of "the floor is lava" isnt. Everything in between was mind-numbingly easy. Mobs posed almost no threat. Questing was the usual "follow the glowing dot on the map" chore. The pop-up "Challenges" were ok in general but popped up at the worst times. "Oh you just reached your quest area? Cool ... now run through all these checkpoints in the other direction before time runs out. Have fun!"
Not to mention there is only so much "Pixar Movie" I can take before it gets irritating.
It depends on what people mean when they say "Hard". What I don't want is more of the same ol' RPG arms race. You know, just add more Health and DPS to mobs, requiring ever higher DPS and Damage Absorption for player characters.
I don't mind "linking" groups of mobs and mobs that can summon adds. I also don't mind mob groups with mixed functions, like having ranged attacks or healers amongst them. Obviously, leaders or special mobs are going to be tougher, but just adding more health and damage output to a mob is king of disappointing in terms of a challenge.
This is really very important and a huge differentiating factor between something like Dark Souls and [insert any MMO here].
Dark Souls isn't about being difficult, it's about leveling up as a player, not as an avatar in a game. The game says, "here are the challenges before you and here are the tools, do with them what you will." MMO's generally do not do that. They pretty much all put into place limitations of "you must be at least this tall to enter" for everything.
If an MMO wants to be "hard" then it should be hard in the sense that the better you play, the more you can do. Not, the longer you play and the better your gear, the more you can do.
Comments
Two kinds of hard :
- Good design hard.
- Bad design hard.
It's up to developers in quality.
Any boss that one shots you is what I call Bad design hard, developers taking the lazy way. Even the most squishy casters should have enough defense to recover from a mistake.
Wildstar - I'll admit the game wasn't cheaply made, but the design decision to project a radius on the ground was simply wrong. I understand they were trying to be unique, but failed when it came to group content. Some people got it some didn't. It was a bad idea !
There is cause and effect to everything in life. Trying to be unique is good, but look at the consequence's before you implement !!!.......Wildstar would be a bad example for a discussion on hard.
This goes along with the post above.
Boss battle in a good design should be 5 minuets before the first player dies....this is GOOD design.
If one player dies, there should at least a slim chance for a win, even in hard content....This is GOOD design.
Ask your self this :
Dungeon A is hard because the boss fight lasted 20 minuets but you often loose.
Dungeon B lasted 30 seconds because the boss destroys the group.
What do you consider fun, example A or B ?
If you did the mistakes that devs did in the alpha gameplay video for pantheon while playing dark souls they would have died repeatedly.
As Shaigh says above: "Dark souls is from zero to hero in 50 hours, with a few hours between every new boss and there is no real penalty for death. The gameplay is built on the premise that you will die, repeatedly."
There is a given amount of gameplay; that takes a certain amount of time; and the game costs a sum of money.
In a subscription based mmo publsihers want you to keep playing because they want you to keep paying. And sadly making things "hard" - as in "time consuming" - was the norm pretty much from day 1. WoW was easy mode as well with far less of the waiting for a boat, long - seriously long - runs from A to B; inordinately long respawn times; corpse recoveries; hours spent assembling enough people to run a "dungeons". And of course that is why we got normal, hard and legendary modes of the same content - quicker and cheaper than making new content. Time consuming - in this sense - doesn't mean "hard" or "challenging" it just means boring.
And at the end of the day the padding ruins the game. It would be like dividing Captain America Civil War up into 3 films - each padded out with adverts and trailers - so that we have to pay more. (I could have said The Hobbit)
Hopefully companies are moving away from "padding". And with some RNG thrown in as well it be harder to google as well (another reason why early mmos were harder as well of course, no walk throughs, but that genie is out of the bottle).
I hate when people don't get the point. Two totally different games. Yes, you cant get any different in comparison.
THE POINT.....Hard, causes Vigor. Hard makes you want more. Hard makes you research, and causes discussion......Best of all Hard makes you keep playing !
How come 75% get the point right off the bat, yet 25% are sooooo closed minded ?
Those guys operated under different rules entirely.
I prefer a challenge but i want more in my game world than just grass,trees and mobs ,i want a living world and a world which we truly RP in.
I also want lots of systems that you would expect to see in a world from crafting to trading to all sorts of ideas.
The reason why so many if not all of these mmorpg's have become boring so quickly is because they offer nothing more than players playing to gain levels.BDO comes along and just because it has some automated node system,people think they made leaps and bounds and all a sudden a great game has emerged.Well they ruined or did everything else pretty much crap,so much for any improvement on the genre.
We need to see "longevity" in our games and no,pvp and some node system is not going to cut it.This is why i am usually satisfied with VERY slow group leveling.I feel a key is to incorporate lots of crafting,be it gardening or some sort of research crafting it all adds up to living in a world instead of just chasing levels or pvp.
Quests is where i feel problems arise,the idea has been way over done,everyone has played a few thousand boring quests by now,we need more depth and creativity with them and NOT make quests the sole reason for login.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
edit: note that I said group game. Raids are a different story.
NEWS FLASH! "A bank was robbed the other day and a man opened fire on the customers being held hostage. One customer zig-zag sprinted until he found cover. When questioned later he explained that he was a hardcore gamer and knew just what to do!" Download my music for free! I release several albums per month as part of project "Thee Untitled" . .. some video game music remixes and cover songs done with instruments in there as well! http://theeuntitled.bandcamp.com/ Check out my roleplaying blog, collection of fictional short stories, and fantasy series... updated on a blog for now until I am finished! https://childrenfromtheheavensbelow.blogspot.com/ Watch me game on occasion or make music... https://www.twitch.tv/spoontheeuntitled and subscribe! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUvqULn678VrF3OasgnbsyA
Edit: i also don't buy it was good design vs bad design. Most people couldn't beat it or it took too long hence why they left.
Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.
Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.
Their art style was aimed at 10 year olds
Their combat was aimed at 17 year olds
Their endgame PvE was aimed at 40 year olds
At the end of the day they made a game that almost everyone hated.
For me something hard is somethign which requires everything you got, not just your IQ. People fall like flies. Only a few win. The rest are beaten firmly and sent back in defeat. No participation trophies.
For me the quality of a agme is directly proprtional to whether it lets me lose. The best games don't care two s***s about me if I lose. They shovel me up and they throw me out. THAT I respect. THAT makes me interested. The rest of them are just whores. They only want yoru moeny.
I agree with the above poster. One shots are not a good way to make an mmo hard.
This is the best example I can think of and it just happens to be from Vanilla World of Warcraft. Since I'm playing that game now, its fresh in my memory.
With all the servers I've been on in way so many years. EVERYONE seems to do dungeons at the lowest level possible. This in it's self gets the groups wiped. Sure it can be done, but heavy coordination is needed. After all the classics style of mmos were designed that way.
SLOW AND STEADY is rule #1.
Tanks agro, and healers mana is rule #2
Study of types of mobs is rule #3
None of this matters in modern games !........modern games are boring !!!
The original design for Vanguard was hardcore, but it became increasingly watered-down as development progressed.
Vanguard was such a mess that it narrowly avoided being cancelled completely. SOE stepped in at the last minute and saved the game from oblivion.
The Vanguard launch was an epic disaster that the game NEVER recovered from, even though the game itself was pretty good after a few years of bug fixing and tweaking.
I think Vanguard would have done much better if they did not release the game until they had an expansion in the works ready for the people when they reached the endgame.. but instead they made a 'trial island' in hopes of grabbing new people... really stupid idea when their world was amazing compared to trial island, it should have been some kind of endgame island.
NEWS FLASH! "A bank was robbed the other day and a man opened fire on the customers being held hostage. One customer zig-zag sprinted until he found cover. When questioned later he explained that he was a hardcore gamer and knew just what to do!" Download my music for free! I release several albums per month as part of project "Thee Untitled" . .. some video game music remixes and cover songs done with instruments in there as well! http://theeuntitled.bandcamp.com/ Check out my roleplaying blog, collection of fictional short stories, and fantasy series... updated on a blog for now until I am finished! https://childrenfromtheheavensbelow.blogspot.com/ Watch me game on occasion or make music... https://www.twitch.tv/spoontheeuntitled and subscribe! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUvqULn678VrF3OasgnbsyA
- RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right?
- FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
There was a carrot, and a stick. Now its just more carrot with little to no stick.
And I completely agree with @SpottyGekko , Vanguard was much more akin to EQ in beta. Everyone was kind of surprised with how drastically things changed at launch, especially once SOE took over.
Not to mention there is only so much "Pixar Movie" I can take before it gets irritating.
Dark Souls isn't about being difficult, it's about leveling up as a player, not as an avatar in a game. The game says, "here are the challenges before you and here are the tools, do with them what you will." MMO's generally do not do that. They pretty much all put into place limitations of "you must be at least this tall to enter" for everything.
If an MMO wants to be "hard" then it should be hard in the sense that the better you play, the more you can do. Not, the longer you play and the better your gear, the more you can do.