This was my thought as well. Turning control of the game experience over to players in that way rarely goes without some kind of exploitation/griefing.
EQ2 actually had(has?) a similar mechanic for custom dungeons, but yeah the Cryptic(and EQ2) versions have unfortunately had the habit of being exploited for xp/resource farming. Last I knew EQ2 solved that by nerfing the custom dungeons into irrelevancy. Guess Cryptic has solved it by phasing out the foundry systems instead of continuing to support them too.
Do feel like the principle of community made content does have to pick up somewhere though if the goal is to allow for more longevity in a game. The mistake generally is that the community content tends to fall into one of two categories.
1) Instanced content that basically just offers more dungeons to raid, and is often either neglected or exploited as it relates to whether or not it's more efficient than a regular dungeon.
2) "Sandbox" content that ultimately tends to lack rhyme or reason with little or no overarching narrative or direction to make it a cohesive world or experience.
It's a weak point that needs a lot more fiddling about and brainstorming on. MMOs are somewhat unique to me in that they are a persistent shared user world where players can theoretically develop and evolve entire worlds and settings collaboratively.
It's the kind of thing where an MMO might want to do something like what EQ Next was attempting to do with Landmark. Create a straight up sandbox counterpart to the primary game world that lets players prototype and show off anything they can come up with, and then filter that content into the "live" game world to allow for a more controlled but regular stream of user created content to extend the game.
Or maybe add an alternative kind of creating something like the book writing in EQ2 or dungeon makers in that and other games where on ur passes a certain number of likes ior play throughs the Creator gets a special status or ability.
Yes I know that could be easily abused but we' could find ways around that.
Something like that would keep it rare and may encourage those creative people to really try hard.
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is bad.
I think content creation can also be limited by introducing some kind of numerical system. When you create content you have 100 points to use and while low level monsters with basic drops might cost 1 point to place boss monsters with better level loot would take up 5 points. There could also be limits on the number of monsters, zone size, rarity of loot etc. That way you can´t have your 5 minute loot run full of rare spawns and the best loot.
/Cheers, Lahnmir
'the only way he could nail it any better is if he used a cross.'
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
That's what EQ2 did from what I recall, dungeons had a budget that you had to build within and the budget only increased if your creations were popular. Issue it ran into though was that the dungeons people could make didn't have any standout purpose as a result, since there was no unique drops and no increased rate to xp gain, it basically ended up being regarded as a weaker version of regular dungeons.
It's not a bad track necessarily though, can cycle back to the trigger systems of things like Starcraft's map editor (or even the more robust later versions), and look at how you can try and push a more storytelling/narrative or even unique gameplay experiences into it. Like instead of a dungeon, if a player could utilize an event system to rig up their own mini games and make a carnival or something. Give the flexibility to reach a bit beyond the standard scope for user experiences instead of trying to extend or get fiddly with rewards.
This was my thought as well. Turning control of the game experience over to players in that way rarely goes without some kind of exploitation/griefing.
EQ2 actually had(has?) a similar mechanic for custom dungeons, but yeah the Cryptic(and EQ2) versions have unfortunately had the habit of being exploited for xp/resource farming. Last I knew EQ2 solved that by nerfing the custom dungeons into irrelevancy. Guess Cryptic has solved it by phasing out the foundry systems instead of continuing to support them too.
Do feel like the principle of community made content does have to pick up somewhere though if the goal is to allow for more longevity in a game. The mistake generally is that the community content tends to fall into one of two categories.
1) Instanced content that basically just offers more dungeons to raid, and is often either neglected or exploited as it relates to whether or not it's more efficient than a regular dungeon.
2) "Sandbox" content that ultimately tends to lack rhyme or reason with little or no overarching narrative or direction to make it a cohesive world or experience.
It's a weak point that needs a lot more fiddling about and brainstorming on. MMOs are somewhat unique to me in that they are a persistent shared user world where players can theoretically develop and evolve entire worlds and settings collaboratively.
It's the kind of thing where an MMO might want to do something like what EQ Next was attempting to do with Landmark. Create a straight up sandbox counterpart to the primary game world that lets players prototype and show off anything they can come up with, and then filter that content into the "live" game world to allow for a more controlled but regular stream of user created content to extend the game.
That's the hard part about player-made content: the devs lose a helluva lot of control over the end product.
You can create systems to stifle exploitation, but that doesn't guarantee players will make content compelling enough to keep other players around. And when you're running a business, that kind of unknown can't feel good.
I agree that there are lots of examples of really great player-made content. But then you have to compare that to how much bad player-made content is out there (either through intent of exploitation/griefing or a mere lack of skill/experience).
That's why I think that's some reward to the creator of the great player made content might work well to encourage it. Great could be defined by the people who are actually using it a rating system of sometime. Yes I know that this can be exploited easily. But you're smart people I'm sure you can figure it out
At blue turtle I really think that the cosmetic items is a good idea. And as you said being able to combine that with a house item that you can get in regular gameplay for the you can Craft on your own is a great idea
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is bad.
That's the hard part about player-made content: the devs lose a helluva lot of control over the end product.
You can create systems to stifle exploitation, but that doesn't guarantee players will make content compelling enough to keep other players around. And when you're running a business, that kind of unknown can't feel good.
I agree that there are lots of examples of really great player-made content. But then you have to compare that to how much bad player-made content is out there (either through intent of exploitation/griefing or a mere lack of skill/experience).
That's a tough set of plates to keep spinning.
Like anything, a vast majority of content produced might likely be bad. That was sort of the point in the case of Landmark for why it's it's own separate play space to filter things through. And yeah, many players will probably make things not worth looking at, but the vast majority of games in general produced, or most any kind of media, tends to not be worth a second glance any ways.
That part is just looking for a high enough interest and churn in the system for some good content to start getting spit out and integrated.
It's difficult too when the only reason someone looks at a system is because they want something from it, instead of wanting it for it's own user experience (as is the crux of many issues around raids). If the only way to get people to play a thing is to give them a cookie then you might need to reassess what's going wrong.That's kinda where I see the idea of pushing novelty of user experience as possibly being a more meaningful venue.
For example, I brought up Starcraft's map editor because one of my favorite maps in that game to play online was "Chrono Trigger RPG" It was a fun and simple cooperative take of the Chrono Trigger game's plot with it's own simple RPG system. It was that kind of custom map and creative gameplay experience that cemented my early love for custom maps as a major interest to me when Warcraft 3 finally came around, and I was delighted how their map editor had managed to up the ante.
Building a community around a game and system that, instead of rewarding players with regular game content (xp, loot, etc) as an incentive, but instead offered unique user experiences as the incentive, could be viable so long as people find they are capable of creating compelling and/or novel content out of it. Something that the developers can leverage for more self-contained user experiences to extend play like how Raids do it, but can also be leveraged to study and feed new user experience content back upwards, to help give the overall community more longevity to the core game.
The fact that a game even has an 'end game' is weird to me.
But that's as much a technical challenge as anything, isn't it? End game isn't so much a dev goal as a practical necessity.
At some point, the journey reaches a termination point. If you include endless progression, you either have to keep churning out endless content, or you have to scale existing content (and repeat it over and over), which begins to make the endless progression seem rather superfluous.
Devs can't create quality content at a fast enough rate to make any gaming experience "endless" without extreme repetition or unreasonable amounts of personnel needed to keep a flow of GM-created content going. The repetitive content at the end becomes the "endgame."
Which is why I think at that point of the game the power for creation should be handed to the players. Ala NWN
From what I remember of the brief amount of time I spent in NW (not NWN) where they did just that, there was a lot of user made content whose sole purpose was to exploit for XP and profit.
User made content is not a bad idea but you need some serious vetting process to keep it honest.
This was my thought as well. Turning control of the game experience over to players in that way rarely goes without some kind of exploitation/griefing.
At some point, one developer needs to apply some AI to the problem. How about, let the players design the content, but have a developer-designed tool to distribute loot when the module is 'published'. A decent version of that should help prevent a good bit of exploitation.
What, if any, developer is going to think far enough outside the box to think of that?
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
But isn't Mythic+ 5 man dungeon? I get it that people don't want to raid, but now you are essentially complaining about doing 5 man dungeon.
So you don't raid or do dungeons. What are you expecting, rewarding stuff for solo content?
Another question is how do you make hard solo content. The only way I can think of is long grind like legendary in GW2. Or being a master of economy and rich enough to buy top gear(for example Eve).
You just explained the problem yourself, Raids are dungeons too. It's the same fundamental type of play.
And as for how you make hard solo content, I refer you to Dark Souls.
Is there really no way for you to look at unique mechanics and challenges that some raids have posed, and not see how similar challenges can be extracted an used in entirely different situations? Are you only able to fathom things as long as it remains within an instanced environment with a few people headbutting it?
What would a really difficult on par with raid creating thing look like?
Getting 40 people to agreeing on what to put on Pizza.
Really the hardest part of a raid is not the content, the other players.
Egotism is the anesthetic that dullens the pain of stupidity, this is why when I try to beat my head against the stupidity of other people, I only hurt myself.
I think it boils down to this. If only a small percentage like to raid why is raiding the only thing to do so the end game? Why is raiding the only way to get good gear so the end game?
Having the only means of progressing being the thing that most people don't want to do sounds weird to me.
Only 1% may beat that hardest raid content but who cares about that if only 10% even want to try.
It's the culture and those who support the culture.
You just explained the problem yourself, Raids are dungeons too. It's the same fundamental type of play.
And as for how you make hard solo content, I refer you to Dark Souls.
Is there really no way for you to look at unique mechanics and challenges that some raids have posed, and not see how similar challenges can be extracted an used in entirely different situations? Are you only able to fathom things as long as it remains within an instanced environment with a few people headbutting it?
Twitch combat is a really bad way to lock out player. Now you are separating a tiny fraction of player that can get the rewards with relatively ease. And large portion of people which can't get their goal no matter how long they try.
Not to mention, it is hard in terms of skills. But it is still easy in terms of effort. Many raider/dungeon crawlers are twitchy too. But they spend much more effort compare to a dark soul player. So it is not fair to reward them with better rewards unless you make it grindy too.
And I can't imagine the forum if the developer take that path. There will be people complaining like you but most likely "much much more people complaining about it".
A casual player does not view their time into the game as less important than some hardcore player, it is still their time and money they have chosen to spend in that game, and it should be equally respected.
If some developer is stupid enough disrespect them, and treat their casuals player like second class citizens, I sincerely hope they have a back-up plan for when all casuals get bored and leave (assuming they even bother to log into the game at all)
I mean, look, here is the deal. If the best stuff in the game is only ever going to get gotten by 10% of your player base.. expect the other 90% to leave, because no one is gonna stay around in a dead end game.. at least not for long.
Egotism is the anesthetic that dullens the pain of stupidity, this is why when I try to beat my head against the stupidity of other people, I only hurt myself.
You seemed to miss the point. I even posed you these questions;
"Is there really no way for you to look at unique mechanics and challenges that some raids have posed, and not see how similar challenges can be extracted an used in entirely different situations? Are you only able to fathom things as long as it remains within an instanced environment with a few people headbutting it?"
As a direct highlight of the fact that even with the scope of the standard MMS sans twitch of Dark Souls style combat, the same kind of mechanics that introduced challenge to a raid can be applied to other forms of gameplay.
You asked for an example of hard solo content, Why are you complaining about hard solo content being hard solo content after asking for an example of it? What did you want me to tell you hard solo content was Happy Carebear Land where people get loot and hugs for free? Hell, even in the suggestions made we have not espoused that players should get everything, hence the point of asking for challenging content outside the narrow scope of just raids and "raids lite".
Additionally, raids "lock" a lot of players out, so what are you trying to gripe about there? You are literally using the reason raids are flawed as your attempted defense for them right now.
And why would it need to be grindy if the skill ceiling is itself the offsetting factor? How do you reach the conclusion that a Dark Souls player puts less effort in than a person in a raid? How can you so readily belittle the time it takes to learn individual boss moves, stages, different weapon and armor moves and when to dodge or block where, etc-etc?
No, there is plenty of effort there already, and being told to do a specific routine by another player in a raid hardly requires any effort especially compared to what you are putting in there for DS.
You want grindy solo quests, there's dailies, and they yet again miss the point of having interesting or challenging content to be rewarded by outside of raids. That's just giving you a cookie for headbutting a wall 500 times.
This is why, as @VengeSunsoar and @Ungood point out, most players simply leave after a time. Because instead of offering variety in play you instead take your line of logic and produce a game where the only challenge, the only thing to look forward to, is this one type of content only a few people have any interest in.
I'd be concerned to work with anyone that thinks your comments are insightful. Put some logic to your argument next time please.
You seemed to miss the point. I even posed you these questions;
"Is there really no way for you to look at unique mechanics and challenges that some raids have posed, and not see how similar challenges can be extracted an used in entirely different situations? Are you only able to fathom things as long as it remains within an instanced environment with a few people headbutting it?"
As a direct highlight of the fact that even with the scope of the standard MMS sans twitch of Dark Souls style combat, the same kind of mechanics that introduced challenge to a raid can be applied to other forms of gameplay.
You asked for an example of hard solo content, Why are you complaining about hard solo content being hard solo content after asking for an example of it? What did you want me to tell you hard solo content was Happy Carebear Land where people get loot and hugs for free? Hell, even in the suggestions made we have not espoused that players should get everything, hence the point of asking for challenging content outside the narrow scope of just raids and "raids lite".
Additionally, raids "lock" a lot of players out, so what are you trying to gripe about there? You are literally using the reason raids are flawed as your attempted defense for them right now.
And why would it need to be grindy if the skill ceiling is itself the offsetting factor? How do you reach the conclusion that a Dark Souls player puts less effort in than a person in a raid? How can you so readily belittle the time it takes to learn individual boss moves, stages, different weapon and armor moves and when to dodge or block where, etc-etc?
No, there is plenty of effort there already, and being told to do a specific routine by another player in a raid hardly requires any effort especially compared to what you are putting in there for DS.
You want grindy solo quests, there's dailies, and they yet again miss the point of having interesting or challenging content to be rewarded by outside of raids. That's just giving you a cookie for headbutting a wall 500 times.
This is why, as @VengeSunsoar and @Ungood point out, most players simply leave after a time. Because instead of offering variety in play you instead take your line of logic and produce a game where the only challenge, the only thing to look forward to, is this one type of content only a few people have any interest in.
I'd be concerned to work with anyone that thinks your comments are insightful. Put some logic to your argument next time please.
Do you play wow? I played wow back in the days. I think it is literally impossible to design hard solo content for wow because it don't use action combat. I don't know if anything was changed to wow's combat system.
I think you have a fair point. I run dungeon solo in GW2 which is designed for 5 man. It is very fun. I always wonder why don't developer put some effort in making challenging solo dungeons.
I talk about grind because difficult don't mean time consuming. Even if they put in dark soul type of action combat, people can beat it quickly and quit the game. There probably need some mechanic to time lock the content(only allow to do once a day or once a week).
Lastly the point I'm trying to make is best gear should absolutely be raid locked in "WoW". I'm not talking about other games, I'm only talking about WoW. Because for that specific game, defeating the hardest raid boss is the most iconic feat and requires the most effort. Me personally, I just think it varies game to game.
A casual player does not view their time into the game as less important than some hardcore player, it is still their time and money they have chosen to spend in that game, and it should be equally respected.
If some developer is stupid enough disrespect them, and treat their casuals player like second class citizens, I sincerely hope they have a back-up plan for when all casuals get bored and leave (assuming they even bother to log into the game at all)
I mean, look, here is the deal. If the best stuff in the game is only ever going to get gotten by 10% of your player base.. expect the other 90% to leave, because no one is gonna stay around in a dead end game.. at least not for long.
A casual player does not view their time into the game as less important than some hardcore player, it is still their time and money they have chosen to spend in that game, and it should be equally respected.
If some developer is stupid enough disrespect them, and treat their casuals player like second class citizens, I sincerely hope they have a back-up plan for when all casuals get bored and leave (assuming they even bother to log into the game at all)
I mean, look, here is the deal. If the best stuff in the game is only ever going to get gotten by 10% of your player base.. expect the other 90% to leave, because no one is gonna stay around in a dead end game.. at least not for long.
Perfect example of this is WILDSTAR.
It is kind of my response to make gear only obtainable by people with good twitch combat.
But I think you guys just have too much epeen... While I think it is nice I can get the best gear and look pretty in town.. But I'll play a game as long as it have good content.
Not to mention most games let you get better gear by doing a 5 minute quest in the next expansion. So I fail to see the point...
I sincerely love how some people call casuals entitled, or claim they have too much e-peen, when all they want is to have their game time respected by developers.
The irony here, is that developers do try to be more E-Sport, so they are all trying to rape up difficulty to get the best players to put on a show for their game, to try and get the big e-sport bucks, but they have as much chance to break into that, as a casual does to do a raid.
So.. they might do well to take a reality check and rethink their marketing and survival strategy.
Egotism is the anesthetic that dullens the pain of stupidity, this is why when I try to beat my head against the stupidity of other people, I only hurt myself.
Do you play wow? I played wow back in the days. I think it is literally impossible to design hard solo content for wow because it don't use action combat. I don't know if anything was changed to wow's combat system.
Did you ever try soloing an elite mob, at level? Or soloing some of the elite quests / areas? Vanilla WoW actually had a fair bit of 'hard solo' content (which could be done in a group as well of course), and most of it even rewarded you with some pretty good gear (at least before the whole 'raid or die' rot set in).
'Hard' content does NOT have to be action / twitch based (have you ever player a turn based game?)... it simply needs you to know your class and use every tool in your kit to overcome the challenge (as opposed to the usual spam 1-2 abilities).
Do you play wow? I played wow back in the days. I think it is literally impossible to design hard solo content for wow because it don't use action combat. I don't know if anything was changed to wow's combat system.
Did you ever try soloing an elite mob, at level? Or soloing some of the elite quests / areas? Vanilla WoW actually had a fair bit of 'hard solo' content (which could be done in a group as well of course), and most of it even rewarded you with some pretty good gear (at least before the whole 'raid or die' rot set in).
'Hard' content does NOT have to be action / twitch based (have you ever player a turn based game?)... it simply needs you to know your class and use every tool in your kit to overcome the challenge (as opposed to the usual spam 1-2 abilities).
I have very vague memory of vanilla wow. It is a long time ago. But I don't think it is any way close to as interesting as soloing boss in action combat games. I remember seeing walock soloing dungeon which is quite interesting. But it relies heavily on kiting and abusing monster AI, which I think seemed awkward.
I sincerely love how some people call casuals entitled, or claim they have too much e-peen, when all they want is to have their game time respected by developers.
The irony here, is that developers do try to be more E-Sport, so they are all trying to rape up difficulty to get the best players to put on a show for their game, to try and get the big e-sport bucks, but they have as much chance to break into that, as a casual does to do a raid.
So.. they might do well to take a reality check and rethink their marketing and survival strategy.
Why do you want gear simply because other people have better gear.
I played vanilla wow. There are times I have been raiding and there are times I didn't. I never care if raider have better gear when I don't raid. I just enjoy the content without ever doing raid. You usually have ways to progress like having multiple character, collecting recipes, making money etc. And there are gear progression. I can get better gear simply by doing dailys which take a few minute a day. Just enjoy yourself and stop caring other people have better stuff than yourself.
You seemed to miss the point. I even posed you these questions;
"Is there really no way for you to look at unique mechanics and challenges that some raids have posed, and not see how similar challenges can be extracted an used in entirely different situations? Are you only able to fathom things as long as it remains within an instanced environment with a few people headbutting it?"
As a direct highlight of the fact that even with the scope of the standard MMS sans twitch of Dark Souls style combat, the same kind of mechanics that introduced challenge to a raid can be applied to other forms of gameplay.
You asked for an example of hard solo content, Why are you complaining about hard solo content being hard solo content after asking for an example of it? What did you want me to tell you hard solo content was Happy Carebear Land where people get loot and hugs for free? Hell, even in the suggestions made we have not espoused that players should get everything, hence the point of asking for challenging content outside the narrow scope of just raids and "raids lite".
Additionally, raids "lock" a lot of players out, so what are you trying to gripe about there? You are literally using the reason raids are flawed as your attempted defense for them right now.
And why would it need to be grindy if the skill ceiling is itself the offsetting factor? How do you reach the conclusion that a Dark Souls player puts less effort in than a person in a raid? How can you so readily belittle the time it takes to learn individual boss moves, stages, different weapon and armor moves and when to dodge or block where, etc-etc?
No, there is plenty of effort there already, and being told to do a specific routine by another player in a raid hardly requires any effort especially compared to what you are putting in there for DS.
You want grindy solo quests, there's dailies, and they yet again miss the point of having interesting or challenging content to be rewarded by outside of raids. That's just giving you a cookie for headbutting a wall 500 times.
This is why, as @VengeSunsoar and @Ungood point out, most players simply leave after a time. Because instead of offering variety in play you instead take your line of logic and produce a game where the only challenge, the only thing to look forward to, is this one type of content only a few people have any interest in.
I'd be concerned to work with anyone that thinks your comments are insightful. Put some logic to your argument next time please.
Do you play wow? I played wow back in the days. I think it is literally impossible to design hard solo content for wow because it don't use action combat. I don't know if anything was changed to wow's combat system.
I think you have a fair point. I run dungeon solo in GW2 which is designed for 5 man. It is very fun. I always wonder why don't developer put some effort in making challenging solo dungeons.
I talk about grind because difficult don't mean time consuming. Even if they put in dark soul type of action combat, people can beat it quickly and quit the game. There probably need some mechanic to time lock the content(only allow to do once a day or once a week).
Lastly the point I'm trying to make is best gear should absolutely be raid locked in "WoW". I'm not talking about other games, I'm only talking about WoW. Because for that specific game, defeating the hardest raid boss is the most iconic feat and requires the most effort. Me personally, I just think it varies game to game.
The point you're trying to make is a point that's been addressed numerous times over then, and the subject of the original post suggesting that a game does not have a singular "best gear" and instead more specialized gear that focuses on respective gameplay paths.
Not only that, but it's submission to a fault of the game rather than a perception that the game needs to improve it's systems.
And It's no more impossible to make hard solo content than it is to make hard raid content. Many of the elements that goes into creating unique challenges for them have no unique trait forcing them to only work in a group or instanced environment.
Also while true, difficult does not inherently mean time consuming, it's more about being engaging. Something worth spending your time on, learning, and replaying to master.
Honestly, if you want a deeper suggestion around making questing something to engage players longer I have a different suggestion around it than simply trying to pose difficulty scaling.
Comments
Do feel like the principle of community made content does have to pick up somewhere though if the goal is to allow for more longevity in a game. The mistake generally is that the community content tends to fall into one of two categories.
1) Instanced content that basically just offers more dungeons to raid, and is often either neglected or exploited as it relates to whether or not it's more efficient than a regular dungeon.
2) "Sandbox" content that ultimately tends to lack rhyme or reason with little or no overarching narrative or direction to make it a cohesive world or experience.
It's a weak point that needs a lot more fiddling about and brainstorming on. MMOs are somewhat unique to me in that they are a persistent shared user world where players can theoretically develop and evolve entire worlds and settings collaboratively.
It's the kind of thing where an MMO might want to do something like what EQ Next was attempting to do with Landmark. Create a straight up sandbox counterpart to the primary game world that lets players prototype and show off anything they can come up with, and then filter that content into the "live" game world to allow for a more controlled but regular stream of user created content to extend the game.
Yes I know that could be easily abused but we' could find ways around that.
Something like that would keep it rare and may encourage those creative people to really try hard.
/Cheers,
Lahnmir
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
It's not a bad track necessarily though, can cycle back to the trigger systems of things like Starcraft's map editor (or even the more robust later versions), and look at how you can try and push a more storytelling/narrative or even unique gameplay experiences into it. Like instead of a dungeon, if a player could utilize an event system to rig up their own mini games and make a carnival or something. Give the flexibility to reach a bit beyond the standard scope for user experiences instead of trying to extend or get fiddly with rewards.
거북이는 목을 내밀 때 안 움직입니다
You can create systems to stifle exploitation, but that doesn't guarantee players will make content compelling enough to keep other players around. And when you're running a business, that kind of unknown can't feel good.
I agree that there are lots of examples of really great player-made content. But then you have to compare that to how much bad player-made content is out there (either through intent of exploitation/griefing or a mere lack of skill/experience).
That's a tough set of plates to keep spinning.
At blue turtle I really think that the cosmetic items is a good idea. And as you said being able to combine that with a house item that you can get in regular gameplay for the you can Craft on your own is a great idea
That part is just looking for a high enough interest and churn in the system for some good content to start getting spit out and integrated.
It's difficult too when the only reason someone looks at a system is because they want something from it, instead of wanting it for it's own user experience (as is the crux of many issues around raids). If the only way to get people to play a thing is to give them a cookie then you might need to reassess what's going wrong.That's kinda where I see the idea of pushing novelty of user experience as possibly being a more meaningful venue.
For example, I brought up Starcraft's map editor because one of my favorite maps in that game to play online was "Chrono Trigger RPG" It was a fun and simple cooperative take of the Chrono Trigger game's plot with it's own simple RPG system. It was that kind of custom map and creative gameplay experience that cemented my early love for custom maps as a major interest to me when Warcraft 3 finally came around, and I was delighted how their map editor had managed to up the ante.
Building a community around a game and system that, instead of rewarding players with regular game content (xp, loot, etc) as an incentive, but instead offered unique user experiences as the incentive, could be viable so long as people find they are capable of creating compelling and/or novel content out of it. Something that the developers can leverage for more self-contained user experiences to extend play like how Raids do it, but can also be leveraged to study and feed new user experience content back upwards, to help give the overall community more longevity to the core game.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
But isn't Mythic+ 5 man dungeon? I get it that people don't want to raid, but now you are essentially complaining about doing 5 man dungeon.
So you don't raid or do dungeons. What are you expecting, rewarding stuff for solo content?
Another question is how do you make hard solo content. The only way I can think of is long grind like legendary in GW2. Or being a master of economy and rich enough to buy top gear(for example Eve).
And as for how you make hard solo content, I refer you to Dark Souls.
Is there really no way for you to look at unique mechanics and challenges that some raids have posed, and not see how similar challenges can be extracted an used in entirely different situations? Are you only able to fathom things as long as it remains within an instanced environment with a few people headbutting it?
Really the hardest part of a raid is not the content, the other players.
Not to mention, it is hard in terms of skills. But it is still easy in terms of effort. Many raider/dungeon crawlers are twitchy too. But they spend much more effort compare to a dark soul player. So it is not fair to reward them with better rewards unless you make it grindy too.
And I can't imagine the forum if the developer take that path. There will be people complaining like you but most likely "much much more people complaining about it".
A casual player does not view their time into the game as less important than some hardcore player, it is still their time and money they have chosen to spend in that game, and it should be equally respected.
If some developer is stupid enough disrespect them, and treat their casuals player like second class citizens, I sincerely hope they have a back-up plan for when all casuals get bored and leave (assuming they even bother to log into the game at all)
I mean, look, here is the deal. If the best stuff in the game is only ever going to get gotten by 10% of your player base.. expect the other 90% to leave, because no one is gonna stay around in a dead end game.. at least not for long.
"Is there really no way for you to look at unique mechanics and challenges that some raids have posed, and not see how similar challenges can be extracted an used in entirely different situations? Are you only able to fathom things as long as it remains within an instanced environment with a few people headbutting it?"
As a direct highlight of the fact that even with the scope of the standard MMS sans twitch of Dark Souls style combat, the same kind of mechanics that introduced challenge to a raid can be applied to other forms of gameplay.
You asked for an example of hard solo content, Why are you complaining about hard solo content being hard solo content after asking for an example of it? What did you want me to tell you hard solo content was Happy Carebear Land where people get loot and hugs for free? Hell, even in the suggestions made we have not espoused that players should get everything, hence the point of asking for challenging content outside the narrow scope of just raids and "raids lite".
Additionally, raids "lock" a lot of players out, so what are you trying to gripe about there? You are literally using the reason raids are flawed as your attempted defense for them right now.
And why would it need to be grindy if the skill ceiling is itself the offsetting factor? How do you reach the conclusion that a Dark Souls player puts less effort in than a person in a raid? How can you so readily belittle the time it takes to learn individual boss moves, stages, different weapon and armor moves and when to dodge or block where, etc-etc?
No, there is plenty of effort there already, and being told to do a specific routine by another player in a raid hardly requires any effort especially compared to what you are putting in there for DS.
You want grindy solo quests, there's dailies, and they yet again miss the point of having interesting or challenging content to be rewarded by outside of raids. That's just giving you a cookie for headbutting a wall 500 times.
This is why, as @VengeSunsoar and @Ungood point out, most players simply leave after a time. Because instead of offering variety in play you instead take your line of logic and produce a game where the only challenge, the only thing to look forward to, is this one type of content only a few people have any interest in.
I'd be concerned to work with anyone that thinks your comments are insightful.
Put some logic to your argument next time please.
I think you have a fair point. I run dungeon solo in GW2 which is designed for 5 man. It is very fun. I always wonder why don't developer put some effort in making challenging solo dungeons.
I talk about grind because difficult don't mean time consuming. Even if they put in dark soul type of action combat, people can beat it quickly and quit the game. There probably need some mechanic to time lock the content(only allow to do once a day or once a week).
Lastly the point I'm trying to make is best gear should absolutely be raid locked in "WoW". I'm not talking about other games, I'm only talking about WoW. Because for that specific game, defeating the hardest raid boss is the most iconic feat and requires the most effort. Me personally, I just think it varies game to game.
But I think you guys just have too much epeen... While I think it is nice I can get the best gear and look pretty in town.. But I'll play a game as long as it have good content.
Not to mention most games let you get better gear by doing a 5 minute quest in the next expansion. So I fail to see the point...
The irony here, is that developers do try to be more E-Sport, so they are all trying to rape up difficulty to get the best players to put on a show for their game, to try and get the big e-sport bucks, but they have as much chance to break into that, as a casual does to do a raid.
So.. they might do well to take a reality check and rethink their marketing and survival strategy.
'Hard' content does NOT have to be action / twitch based (have you ever player a turn based game?)... it simply needs you to know your class and use every tool in your kit to overcome the challenge (as opposed to the usual spam 1-2 abilities).
I played vanilla wow. There are times I have been raiding and there are times I didn't. I never care if raider have better gear when I don't raid. I just enjoy the content without ever doing raid. You usually have ways to progress like having multiple character, collecting recipes, making money etc. And there are gear progression. I can get better gear simply by doing dailys which take a few minute a day. Just enjoy yourself and stop caring other people have better stuff than yourself.
Not only that, but it's submission to a fault of the game rather than a perception that the game needs to improve it's systems.
And It's no more impossible to make hard solo content than it is to make hard raid content. Many of the elements that goes into creating unique challenges for them have no unique trait forcing them to only work in a group or instanced environment.
Also while true, difficult does not inherently mean time consuming, it's more about being engaging. Something worth spending your time on, learning, and replaying to master.
Honestly, if you want a deeper suggestion around making questing something to engage players longer I have a different suggestion around it than simply trying to pose difficulty scaling.