Chaam said:
Filzin said:
For me, the challenge is the fun. The most difficult encounters have been the ones that keep players logging in. Getting by one obstacle after another. Pouring over logs looking for the pattern. I certainly hope PROTF is full of encounters that we are talking about a decade later. Nobody remembers the easy ones.
haha, I remember the easy ones. I remember Killing a shadowblade in heedmar. Was kind of easy. Just poking at ya Filzin. I agree though which easy encounter do you remember that was fun.
I remember Shendu, Tharidon, Karax, Sisters, Kotasoth (best looking dragon ever) or how about the summoners, Rinpin and such. Even better do you remember the all fathers?
So many memories mate, I would love to be able to log in and raid with you guys right now! :(
So, on gnoll warriors, wizards and such, I was thinking about it:
- The quest goal should be worthy of our attention -
This is a critical point. How would you make people kill gnolls and love it? Here's the same quest, given in a different way: tell the player that the gnoll necromancer The Ishva Mal obtained The Book of Necronomicon, which will give gnolls powers to wage war on nearby human cities. The player's task is to get that book... by any means.
Of course, when the player gets there, there will be gnolls aplenty, of every kind. He'll kill 5 gnoll warriors, and 5 gnoll wizards, and 5 gnoll priests, and more.
The player will essentially do the same as in the original quest.
But the goal that the player will have in mind will be by far less mundane and boring.
Yes, someone will try to skip content, to summon to the quest npc, or do anything else to avoid clearing an army of gnolls. But a good dungeon design can prevent a lot of cheezing.
And the quest line will be >>memorable<<, something you will want to talk to other about, as opposed to being a dull and boring grind.
Aethor said:
So, on gnoll warriors, wizards and such, I was thinking about it:
- The quest goal should be worthy of our attention -
This is a critical point. How would you make people kill gnolls and love it? Here's the same quest, given in a different way: tell the player that the gnoll necromancer The Ishva Mal obtained The Book of Necronomicon, which will give gnolls powers to wage war on nearby human cities. The player's task is to get that book... by any means.
Of course, when the player gets there, there will be gnolls aplenty, of every kind. He'll kill 5 gnoll warriors, and 5 gnoll wizards, and 5 gnoll priests, and more.The player will essentially do the same as in the original quest.
But the goal that the player will have in mind will be by far less mundane and boring.
Yes, someone will try to skip content, to summon to the quest npc, or do anything else to avoid clearing an army of gnolls. But a good dungeon design can prevent a lot of cheezing.
And the quest line will be >>memorable<<, something you will want to talk to other about, as opposed to being a dull and boring grind.
Exactly and that is a good example mate, as I said, it's all about the delivery and reasons for doing it.
That is always the problem right? What is fun? What is a challenge? What is to difficult? You can take one group of players send them into a dungeon and they move through it with moderate ease maybe a few bumps here and there. Then you take another group and they cant even get past the first pull. There will always be that dynamic. It is because of this there needs to be that hard content. It allows players to separate themselves from other players. It motivates players to sharpen their skills to move into that set of content. With that being said its finding that balance between how much content should lean which way. I dont know if you can actually draw that line because its different for everyone.
Well, Raroic, you touched a critical point here. When there is a challenge, and a group can't get past their first pull (in a place where they should reasonably be able to), the people react in two ways.
One set of people try to become better. They stop and think, figure out what were they doing wrong, or if anything is needed first, such as more gear or specific spells. They ask others for advice. They try and eventually succeed.
They improve themselves until they reach the level of the game.
This journey becomes something to remember. They have to work on themselves, and they also have to work with others, in order to accomplish a hard goal. This means they have to show at least some respect to others, and help them in turn, when those others need it. This makes for stories that people remember for years.
Then the next expansion can again give them higher level challenges, and the story goes on.
The other group whines and/or gives up; they don't want to work on their skills. They ask that the game is made easier, and easier and easier, until they can do it without any problems.
They lower the game down to their level.
If the game is lowered, eventually it happens again and again, to the lowest common denominator, and it becomes pointless for anyone above that level. In this game then there is no real progression - the players themselves don't progress, they get shiny items and levels, but they don't have any need to become better.
This attitude transfers to everything else - they also don't need to cooperate with others, to appreciate or help others. They don't need to know people. Everything becomes instant gratification, queuing with a bunch of other people you don't really know or give a damn about, running through an instance, new loot in the inventory, and nothing that anyone will remember.
Three months later, they leave, without any significant memories, and without leaving others anything to remember either.
I think things can be both challenging and fun at the same time.
Some mechanics that I have really enjoyed include:
1) Mobs that run for their lives or call for the help of others when they are low on health or outnumbered.
2) Trains... When was the last time a game had real trains like old school Blackburrow ?
3) Exp loss... Wait you say "That's not fun !" but the fun comes when you ding level 50 and all the scrubs are still dying in their 30's ;)
4) Super rare items... Pretty darn exciting and fun when you get one tho.
5) Multi stage raids that can last 20mins or more... nail biting goodness as you cross that 10% health line.
For a game like Pantheon I'd like them to err on the side of too hard instead of too easy... dials can always be tweeked back a bit but its a lot harder to take back loot pinata drops.
I remember beating The Rathe Council event back in PoP EQ1 era and we had been bangin our heads against it for days... then finally when we dropped it there was almost a disbelief and then everyone in guild busted out in cheers... because it was hard... hard as hell...
Thanks for reading,
Kiz~
P.S. As I have said in other threads but just for the record I really enjoyed the way Vanguard handled crit chains... and counterspells...
Exp loss on death never really bothered me, even in the so-called " hell" levels, in a good group, you could always get it back in a few hours, or a few days, scheduling permitting.
And AA's - I was influenced by a trivial loot code server, so an AA would allow me to slow down leveling. If they came out when I was younger I would have strived to travel through danger- but carefully- to other newbie cities, learn the racial/ class biases to me, if any. Do some fun, hokey factioning quests, learn if there is a guild for my class there. Find out where the bank is, explore a little outside, see how this city/town relates to its environment (ah, qeynos is to blackburrow as rivervale is to pickclaw- wait, pickclaw has bankers! how neat!). Then once established, then we can get serious and start adventuring. which means: we go, we fight, and then when it is time to stop, we all camp out in the open in this spot, and then agree to wake up in game at the same time tomorrow, to continue on. For some reason, that was impossible in all the 7 years I played EQ. I was I, I was there the next day, if they were not there, then who were they?
Kilsin said:Chaam said:
Filzin said:
For me, the challenge is the fun. The most difficult encounters have been the ones that keep players logging in. Getting by one obstacle after another. Pouring over logs looking for the pattern. I certainly hope PROTF is full of encounters that we are talking about a decade later. Nobody remembers the easy ones.
haha, I remember the easy ones. I remember Killing a shadowblade in heedmar. Was kind of easy. Just poking at ya Filzin. I agree though which easy encounter do you remember that was fun.
I remember Shendu, Tharidon, Karax, Sisters, Kotasoth (best looking dragon ever) or how about the summoners, Rinpin and such. Even better do you remember the all fathers?
So many memories mate, I would love to be able to log in and raid with you guys right now! :(