No, it's not beyond repair.
We all know it's the game industry as a whole that's the issue (and there are similar issues in all industry).
Big companies, especially those with shareholders to keep happy with good quarterly projections, only want to cater to the mass market for the big/safe bucks and will happily cater to the lowest common denominator and churn out mediocre blandness to do it.
Real *fans* of *anything* are often disappointed these days because very few producers are content to excel in a small market.
Even when the market is flooded with grey goop still companies fight each other over market share of the grey goop pie.
There are some companies, often formed of people who are fed up with the status quo, like VR, who decide to bravely *not* chase the mass market and produce something *intentionally* aimed at a niche in order to a) produce something worhwhile and b) gain a fiercely loyal following.
The danger is, and what often occurs, is they gain some success and are tempted to *then* change their product to gain mass appeal, but in the process ruin it for the fans they were making it for in the first place.
It's up to us to support VR so they don't want to do that!
TL;DR: There is a market for mediocre, easy RPGs. The problem is the market has become flooded with them and nothing else. Praise The Gods and VR with their vision to produce something different!
I believe that the concept of challenge hasn't been removed or lost but the definition of challenge has catastrophically changed.
Challenge used to be exploring a virtual world, figuring out how to survive in a virtual world and learning to advance in a virtual world.
Those core challenges are now viewed as nothing more than inconvenient nuisances to the current definition of challenge which is a mad-dash thumb-twitcher race to the top of the combat scorecard.
The salvation PRF can bring is not "create challenge" but to "redefine challenge."
Games have been toned down to allow a constant progress in the worst scenario possible : When playing alone and unable to find friends or groupmates for something. However, while it is comprehensible from the lone player side, the more it goes and the less the game is a MMORPG.
When a type of game is aimed to make people play together, from the scratch to the end, it's hard as a fond of the genre to look at games claiming the same status and favoring soloplay until your reach a specific content where you have to find other players, or be matched with them.
Since the release of World of Warcraft, my friendlist in MMORPG is getting thinner and thinner, not because people are different, or because I don't care about anyone, but simply because there is no need, or reasons to gather outside of very specific content, and thus people are less interested in social interractions. Even thought people see Wow as the devil, it had very good sides at first, including a great need of other players for at least, quests and numerous dungeons. But dungeons were too much work to maintain over the course of Ilvl and they are shrinking constantly to avoid making temporary content and focus the "casual gearing" in boring and braindead LFR.
I however, agree some things cannot be as magical as they were in 1999. Internet was brand new, talking to each others from other countries was new and exciting, and not to say playing with them. Theses things are now an everyday's life everyone is used to, less "magic" and less genuine interest in each others. Everything is connected, most people have discord on their smartphone and thus the wish to talk during the playtime has reduced, because no desire is stacked during workhours to be finally released.
On the same side, websites track everything you need, and in addition to automated data gathering, datamining is beeing a constant part in most games, revealing every line of dialog as soon as it is avaliable to the client.
Surprise, discovery, is what made MMO's a big "woah". However, now is the decade of controlled environments, with everything scheduled, known and mastered even before having our hands on it.
We are all guilty of something, to some extent, and for theses reasons we are all responsible of making Pantheon's community the greatest since EQ prime time. Where people want to play together and not run in a boss, tag it and await for a contribution while beeing afk.
I think that my opinion that there is no and can be no "challenge" for a very long time in past and current MMORPGs was slightly misunderstood so I will develop the argument a bit more .
1) Current MMORPGs are without exception script based . Some games include a random component which can randomly modify the interval between NPC actions, the damage dealt/received the number of adds etc but it still stays script based . There is no difficulty or challenge involved in understandinging a script even if it includes eventual random elements . The hard way is to fight the script several times and loose before understanding , the easy way is to watch 10 minutes a youtube video and memorize the strategy .
2) Within weeks appear websites and video tutorials devising strategies how to beat any encounter , raid or quest . Devising a winning strategy against a script is a trivial undertaking and the existence of web sites doing exactly that attests how easy it is . Sometimes specific stats (f.ex fire resistance) or minimum gear or a prescribed number of some class are needed to beat the script but once it is known it doesn't constitute any "challenge" anymore . One simply gets the necessary gear, classes and/or stats .
3) Once a script has been beaten what in itself is no significant challenge as explained above , the encounter / quest becomes trivial . It may still be done for loot but there will never be any challenge unless the script is modified in which case the procedure to beat the new script described above in 1) must be done one more time . For example FF14 has some rather complex and partly random dungeons which sometimes change in updates but it never takes more than 2 or 3 tries and some gear upgrades before the dungeon becomes again trivial .
4) This absence of any challenge is not a thing of today . It has always existed but 20 years ago the distribution of information was much slower so that players could have the illusion that things were hard for a much longer time than today . For example the epic quest in EQ has taken months to be understood and walkthroughs to be written and some fights have been difficult for poorly geared players for a long time . It took time but there was no challenge involved . Some people confuse a 1/100 drop ratio with a difficulty or a challenge . In reality there is no difficulty, there is only the necessary time investment to kill around 100 times some given mob to get the necessary drop . Camping something N times or doing the same raid N times to get a drop has never been synonymous for difficulty or challenge .
5) This is why for me the real evil is not some disparition of a "challenge" that has never been there first place but the massive and very fast dissemination of walktroughs, strategies, tutorials and video guides allowing to know everything about a given quest/fight what is enabled by the fact that everything in MMORPG is scripted . That's why I am quite convinced that the future of MMORPGs will not be about having more scripted mobs with more HP , more resists, more random casts and more adds but in the introduction of adaptative AI and evolutive environment which will make all the walktroughs useless because mobs will learn and circumstances will change all the time . The future MMORPGs will look like history in the making .
MyNegation said:Kilsin said:Challenge:
- Have today's MMORPGs watered down the genre too far,
- has the challenge been removed beyond repair,
- and how do you think this will effect MMORPGs in the future?
a- unfortunately, yes. the PVE challenge is removed, the whole world can be soloed, the mobs are wimps, on level mobs are much weaker than same level player character. some games still have small instanced part which is dungeons and raids that requires a group but it is not saving the game as a whole.
b- no, not beyond repair, I think that in every MMO, if we will take the "basic" mob, and will scale it to the difficulty of a player character of its level i.e.: same HP, armor, weapon damage, and spells. then the game world will become challenging and interesting overnight. people will make groups and use CC in order to stand to the mobs.
just imagine if the whole world of warcraft world is built as one huge seamless mythic dungeon, and the only "safe spaces" are the main cities.
it is the catering to the lazy player that seeks instant gratification what brought us up to here.
c- the pendulum will reach its edge and come back, even now there are many games in the making that are not watered down (though most of them are PVP games, and Pantheon is a sole PVE game)
another issue is that in the "old" MMOs the content was the reward and the gearing was the means to reach that reward, the players 'collected' content but with time, the gear became the reward and the content became the means to reach that reward, and players started to collect gear. we have to reverse this back.
Challenge has been removed, but it's not beyond repair - just developers haven't been willing to risk alienating a wider audience to appeal to those who would want a more challenging game.
I'm still a firm believer that if Pantheon sticks to its original tenets, it will be Field of Dreams style, "If you build it, they will come." Most developers though have chased the $$$ at the chance for mass marketing, or have folded to investors $$$ due to it usually being a necessity to keep the project going, which, usually changes the original vision and typically at the expense of challenge.
I'd still use EQ as a measuring stick There's a reason EQ is still in existence even though it's a shell of its original self. Here's a quote from Brad/Aradune back in 2015 in regards to EQ:
Posted by Aradune 1/14/15 at 5:34 PM
"Just some EQ factoids: EQ peaked at ~550k subscribers. EQ cost $8M to make, and took three years. EQ is one of the most, if not the most, profitable enterprises Sony has ever created. It has made over $500M for the company. EQ remains to this day a profitable game, with enough subscribers to pay for Expansions and a decent sized dev team."
I also think there's a lot larger audience for a challenging MMO that uses first generation mechanics (and improves on them if need be). People just need to be exposed to something different again to "get" what all of us old-timers here rave about.
X
Deadshade said:I think that my opinion that there is no and can be no "challenge" for a very long time in past and current MMORPGs was slightly misunderstood so I will develop the argument a bit more .
1) Current MMORPGs are without exception script based . Some games include a random component which can randomly modify the interval between NPC actions, the damage dealt/received the number of adds etc but it still stays script based . There is no difficulty or challenge involved in understandinging a script even if it includes eventual random elements . The hard way is to fight the script several times and loose before understanding , the easy way is to watch 10 minutes a youtube video and memorize the strategy .
If this is in fact the case, why are so many people unable to best the highest level raid mobs consistently in world of warcraft (which is arguably the mmo with the most information given to players regarding what's coming and what they should be doing).
Infact there is only a small small percentage of people that are able to win in a consistent basis. There is clearly challenge here.
I'll caveat that I have not played WoW in over a decade so i can't speak for that game. But just because a fight has a script or a pattern doesn't mean it can't be challenging - Youtube videos or not. What matters is execution in the moment. You can be prepared for a fight, be equipped for a fight, and have gone over the strategy a dozen times. But you as an individual still have to execute on that.
Many games have moved towards more action-oriented combat specifically to enhance challenge. Dodging, standing in the right spot, not standing in the wrong spot - all of that is done specifically to up the challenge level. Script or no script.
So, I don't think we should equate predictability with a lack of challenge. What causes a lack of challenge in an individual fight is when a player does not *have* to react - either because they're overpowering the encounter, or because the game simply can't or won't throw anything at them that might require them to have to change tactics.
The best encounters in any game are the ones that force you to think and react, whether it's your first time or your hundredth time trying that encounter. I'm pretty sure that every game has at least a few of these.
What I think we want in Pantheon is for this sort of challenge to be the rule, rather than the exception. However it is accomplished.
Porygon said:Deadshade said:I think that my opinion that there is no and can be no "challenge" for a very long time in past and current MMORPGs was slightly misunderstood so I will develop the argument a bit more .
1) Current MMORPGs are without exception script based . Some games include a random component which can randomly modify the interval between NPC actions, the damage dealt/received the number of adds etc but it still stays script based . There is no difficulty or challenge involved in understandinging a script even if it includes eventual random elements . The hard way is to fight the script several times and loose before understanding , the easy way is to watch 10 minutes a youtube video and memorize the strategy .
If this is in fact the case, why are so many people unable to best the highest level raid mobs consistently in world of warcraft (which is arguably the mmo with the most information given to players regarding what's coming and what they should be doing).
Infact there is only a small small percentage of people that are able to win in a consistent basis. There is clearly challenge here.
I'd argue the amount of high-skilled players is much lower than that of average to low-skilled. I obviously have no raw data, this is all my subjective experience. And, with WoW, that number is only amplified due to the still large subscription #s, and, simply the type of gamer that game still draws (more casual). With that said, I do think Deadshade is correct in that most fights are scripted, similar to some of the Weapon-type mobs in the FF series that once you understand the gimmicks, you can overcome the battle.
The harder thing still, is to get the one to two bad players to not ruin the whole fight, so, in that sense, I do think it can be "challenging," but that's not the type of challenging I'm seeking.
There is way too much thinking about combat and encounters and bettles and fights. This whole mentality is the root of the problem. Every time a quesiton is asked, it always comes down to shouting about raid encounters or combat and fighting. That's only a sliver of the challenging experience.
I think they definately have, every MMO that has come out in the past 10 years has followed this suit, and they have all failed mostly because wow who pioneered the garbage (IMO) can and always will do it better and already have the foundation. That being said I do however believe that it can be broken. I think VR have the capabilities to make it happen. If you guys hold true to the code I think you will see an extremely large number of players at launch, most of which when they get a taste of true accomplishment will be hooked instantly and stick around for years. I hope you guys make the game you want to make and not what everyone else wants you to make, Ive been following brads workings since I understood just exactly who he was, which he is kind of a jackass because he always ends up selling out his portions of his creations, but anyway all in all he has a knack for this stuff. I know you say community matters and it doesand it should to me and my fellow playerbase, but i dont think it shouldnt matter to you guys in a sense of what we want and more of the things you give to us that we didnt know we wanted, you build it and they will come, EQ swept people up and sucked them in and locked them down for years, Vanguard was good but a little off key imo. Keep up the good work, and by good work i mean the work you are doing to improve the scope of the genre. Hats off to you gentlemen cant wait to see this beauty in person!
It depends on how you want to rate a challenge.
There are several types be it completionist type of challenges Ie Achievements , raid content those uber bosses that only a handful of guilds complete as current content.
I can go on and on , there is challenge in the genere across multiple MMO's even wow (Sunwell 3 % of the entire population even cleared it on point) it will boil down to risk vs reward.
The concept of challenge is nothing more then time investment and risk vs reward imo and finding people with the same type of mentality willing to accomplish similar tasks.
The entire key for a mmo , is how the challenge is presented.
The genre is not dead, the population playing it has shifted in age and expectation based on the mainstream mmo players' experience.
This genre can have it's challenge and fair share of discoveries and some bits that perhaps never fully be discovered. What must be remembered here, is that one would create a niche game. What I mean is that it will not be a game for your every day jo and lass next door. This game would be aimed at people that want to struggle and find enjoyment of making small progress or rare finds and slow progression. Perhaps a lot will try the game but may grow bored and tiered of the "slow" progress they are able to make, if any, compared to the other mmo's out there. The fancy abilities, tricks and moves is what lured those players to the game, but if it takes to long to get to that point, they will start to drift or find ways to exploit and bypass the "boring/challenging" stuff. These players might end up going back to other mmo that do provide that guided tour experience with quick progress and high damage numbers they long for.
You won't become the richest developer in the world with this kind of niche/challenging game. But the market/players will fill up your playerbase if the game is fitting for them.
For those that haven't played anything but easy, fast leveling mmo's. This will be a make or break when trying out a different style of mmo. So we might find new fans of this style and we'll definatly encounter people that hate it. Todays world is all about fast, easy, little effort accomplisments in life, most without much meaning. So the general way of life outside the gameworld leans more towards that fastpace mmo-style. With every trend you have those that follow it and those that look for different something something.
For my part.. Yes it is time for mmo to rise and let players experience the true impact of failing, struggling and dieing in a game. Something other then one button click and starting renewed. Let players think about their actions in a game, make them pauze before their storm in a town and click away through dialogs and follow-the-trail maps. Let them wonder about the possibilities of what if I do this or that...
When talking about combat challenges...well I believe a dev can design abilities, skills and ca's in such a way, that the player will need to keep his focus if he/she wants to defeat an enemy in group or solo. If it's just about rotating two main ca's and standing in one place, the dev's have failed more than the player. Only very rarely have I encountered players that make the game more difficult by their own playstyle (gearing down, using other than the best abilities or weapons, moving more than is minimum required for that certain encounter), just because the keyboardmashing is too easy for them. So for me, there it's all in the hands of the dev's. So if you think the mmo or the game is dead..perhaps it is dead by design? Something to think twice about ....
Have today's MMORPGs watered down the genre too far? Heck yes, they have.
Has the challenge been removed beyond repair? Not beyond repair...not as long as games with Pantheon's core tenets are still being made.
What does this mean for the future of MMORPGs? That's up to the game companies who produce the content, and the players who either support it or don't.
I recently tried to teach my neice who is 1.5 years old to play Mario Kart 8. I put the difficaulty to the lowest, the speed to lowest and there was some function that kept her on the track. Basically I tried to inform her best I could (she can't speak yet) that she had to hold the gas. In the end, she didn't place last and indeed finished the track. My neice may or may not have realized that what she did with the controller affected the game on the screen and she still did "fine". However, there is a competitive scene in Mario Kart 8 (apparently) and within that context, a 1.5 year old would probably not do to well. Granted, Mario Kart is mostly analogous to PvP but my point is that most MMOs today have a very, very low barrier to entry in terms of difficaulty, just like Mario Kart. There's still challenge to be had, otherwise people who play a lot would leave. I'd argue that there are just as many complaints about the game being too hard and inconvenient as there are about not having any new content to bash ones head against.
In my opinion there's an unfortunate attitude that any content or challenge that is not on max level isn't real content. If the challenge was in the beginning of the game, rather than after obligatory but meanlingless grinding, then it would both be easier to keep up with designing new encounters so that they don't run out and it would make the early game much more fun.
In a game like the current version of WoW, I'd rather just see them remove levels altogether, they don't have a functioning place in the game at all. WoW does have challenge to be had, for sure, but you have to look for it with intent.
Most previous mmos challenge has become non existent.
They just throw random classes on a boss and dps through mechanics this is the wow of today sad.
I get no enjoyment off reaching max level in a game that takes 48 hours its hard to feel apart of a living breathing world in 48 hours. I want to grind i want hardship and challenge if everything in life was easy to obtain we would want nothing and be bored. We would have no goals modivation or desire to better ourselves. The same goes for mmos i want to feel like every level is meaningful and rewarding to obtain. Iwant to feel that struggle and reward for my effort.
if you only play 3 hours a day thats ok don't be mad at those who play more. If a player truly enjoys the game they will play for the right reasons and not care how long it takes to max or get top end gear.
The huge issue with todays mmos is simple they only have challenge at the top end perhaps 5 percent of the game! The entire beganing middle and part of endgame has no challenge.Its really i think poisoned mmos in general.You talk to players and they are like well the game only starts at the endgame its just bad. Challenge - mechanics to some degree should exist at all levels.
Challenging content needs to require unique skills- aurmour - mechanics- weather- enviroment and design to complete regardless of if its open world' dungeons or raids this is whats missing in mmos! And this is what Pantheon looks to be realizing and creating. Breaking the wheel and redesigning it better something very few companys have the courage to do that earns my respect.
Im not saying make the entire game very challenging but why can't low to mid level content be hard in some areas and have some mechanics. I honestly can't remember the last time i died in open world wow or felt challenged.
Pantheon looks like it will bring mmo challenge back to life.
I can not say enough how much im looking forward to needing specific gear and skills to survive the encounter and elements finally!
fazool said:There is way too much thinking about combat and encounters and bettles and fights. This whole mentality is the root of the problem. Every time a quesiton is asked, it always comes down to shouting about raid encounters or combat and fighting. That's only a sliver of the challenging experience.
I think happens because in most peoples eyes (even casual people who have no desire to raid) they understand that raiding should be the most challenging form of battle.
you can absolutely have challenge elsewhere, like exploration and navigation. Tradeskills etc. But the combat aspect, and there in, the raiding aspect of combat tend to be looked at as the pinnacle of difficulty.
Porygon said:fazool said:There is way too much thinking about combat and encounters and bettles and fights. This whole mentality is the root of the problem. Every time a quesiton is asked, it always comes down to shouting about raid encounters or combat and fighting. That's only a sliver of the challenging experience.
I think happens because in most peoples eyes (even casual people who have no desire to raid) they understand that raiding should be the most challenging form of battle.
you can absolutely have challenge elsewhere, like exploration and navigation. Tradeskills etc. But the combat aspect, and there in, the raiding aspect of combat tend to be looked at as the pinnacle of difficulty.
I disagree. From an individual's stand point a Raid is far from the most challenging form of battle. (Would appreciate you not speaking for me "casual people who have no desire to raid") The challenge of a raid is getting everyone to do their small part of the dance at the right time without getting themselves killed. I've been on many raids and they involve step left out of the aoe, step right out of the aoe, jump now, dps now, stop dps now, etc... just a dance. Rarely anything hard or unexpected. You have cleared the trash now take the boss. That's also a lot of the reason gear levels are so important to people these days. It's not about skill in playing your character. It's about doing the right amount of dps.
Real challenge comes when you throw in the unexpected. And it can be a 1on1 situation with maybe an add or even a group against a unexpected Train. THAT is real challenge, not some preplanned dance 25 on 1 with a single Mob with a lot hit points.
The challenge has been lost, but it's not beyond repair. Give us unpredictability, that alone will bring back a lot of it. And if you want to add challenge back then don't spend a lot of time on making raid content... the only people that want that are those that rush to "end game" and then quit anyway.
Zorkon said:I disagree. From an individual's stand point a Raid is far from the most challenging form of battle. (Would appreciate you not speaking for me "casual people who have no desire to raid") The challenge of a raid is getting everyone to do their small part of the dance at the right time without getting themselves killed. I've been on many raids and they involve step left out of the aoe, step right out of the aoe, jump now, dps now, stop dps now, etc... just a dance. Rarely anything hard or unexpected. You have cleared the trash now take the boss. That's also a lot of the reason gear levels are so important to people these days. It's not about skill in playing your character. It's about doing the right amount of dps.
Real challenge comes when you throw in the unexpected. And it can be a 1on1 situation with maybe an add or even a group against a unexpected Train. THAT is real challenge, not some preplanned dance 25 on 1 with a single Mob with a lot hit points.
Agreed. Raiding is no more challenging on an individual level (unless you are leading it maybe) than anything else, just more frustrating if anything as waaaay more pople need to be on top of things. In fact I think I have had more personally challenging or tense 1 v 1 and group encounters than raids, the weight of each individual's actions being far greater.
This question is badly worded and vague.
You need to define what you think a challenge is and how it has been removed.
And moreover, to answer accurately you would need to have total knowledge of all MMO's, or at least ones applicable to your argument.
Most posters here only played one or two MMOs to any great length, so their "opinion" is largely based on that limited knowledge.
Here is a quickly cobbled list of early better known MMOs. Explain how they successively got "watered down" please. I included the wiki list of all MMOs at the bottom if you wish to peruse them.
-----------------
1997
Ultima Online
1998
Lineage
1999
EQ1
Asheron’s Call
DAOC (realm vs. realm)
Anarchy Online
2001
Runescape (sprite based)
Maple Story (2D sprite based, FTP)
2002
Earth & Beyond
FFXI (first multi-platform)
2003
Shadowbane
Everquest Online Adventures (PS2)
EVE Online
Toontown Online (Disney)
Lineage II
Second Life
SWG
2004
City of Heroes
EQ2
WoW
2005
Guild Wars
Matrix Online
City of Villians
2006
DDO
2007
Vanguard
Age of Conan
Aion
LOTR
2008
Warhammer Online
Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massively_multiplayer_online_role-playing_games
The internet has crushed the challenge. It already killed adventures and is eating mmos raid challenges alive.
Most MMOS are designed to solo and I do understand that. New player areas in most MMOs are ghost towns. Without the ability to solo, the provider loose precious fresh blood not because they don't like the game but the game mechanism itself hinder or even blocking them. Solution is to make mobs so easy that every single class in a game can solo them. Times when an MMO has fresh folks joining the game for years are long in the past. Some MMOs don't even survive month after years of development because the market got faster more diverse and players don't pardon flaws for long. Or the game was made so easy that the power gamers went through the content in a month and quit after realizing that there is nothing more.
And please don't mix up challenge and difficulty. Even a game that takes your hand can be a challenge and a difficult game can easy be frustrating. I don't like to have a red X at where I find the mob automatically but I don't mind an NPC telling me that he will mark the spot on my map for me. Automatism against Lore, same result total different story.
If the Dark Souls franchise is any indicator there is certainly a market for brutally challenging content. Likewise a niche game could very easily be tuned to Dark Souls level of difficulty but you will loose a lot of the players who are not interested in that difficult of a game. There is also a vast difference between current super easy, solo able, mass enemy games and Dark Souls.
The key to making a game seem challenging without being brutalizing is having consequences to mistakes really matter but leaving opportunities to respond to a mistake or two before dying. Also tuning all encounters to a minimum of three players will also automatically make the game harder for soloing while not making it difficult in a group.
Another way of making non-trivial but not brutally difficult content is requiring players to make smart preparations and intelligent dynamic skill usage choices from encounter to encounter.
Trasak