Interesting Age of Conan Player Poll Results

[Ratman_tf]

Regarding puzzles: earlier I said that MMOGs aren't cursed to suckiness - they're cursed to being MMOGs.  Puzzles aren't something that MMOGs do well.  AC1 had a puzzle of sorts (composing spells), and it was fun for the first month of beta, then the algorithm was cracked and it became trivial.  All that design work amounted to a month of frantic work by a fraction of the playerbase.

Combat isn't something that MMORPGs do well, either. But it's pretty prevalent in the genere.

[KallDrexx]

With MMOs you need to change the goals of the game to change the paths to get there. You can even keep dumb AI if your game is about narrative and diplomacy with the occasional fight. Here thouh your character advancement can't be tied to mob XP. Makes you lazy, relying on kill collect "quests" on countless mobs that never change behavior (ooo this one poison). 

This is one of the reasons I am (cautiously) looking forward to Guild Wars 2.  Knock on full instancing as much as you like but if taken advantage of it can really put a great emphasis on story and real adventuring. 

[WindupAtheist]

Give me an MMO with combat that would be fun even if there weren't a ding attached.  Period.  Jesus, is this hard to comprehend?

[UnSub]

Give me an MMO with combat that would be fun even if there weren't a ding attached.  Period.  Jesus, is this hard to comprehend?

Agreed. Given how many players solo anyway, the game needs to be fun as a single player game that multiplayer only enhances. MMOs risk splitting off into their own rabid fanbase who will only play a MMO that has <insert list of unchanging crtical systems here> and that are a niche market in and of themselves if every MMO just copies the EQ model because that's what worked 5 years ago (or so). New players don't like having to come in and learn a new game that is already speaking in double dutch to them (i.e. DoTs, SoWs, FAs, etc) from 'team mate' players who get impatient with every n00b who is learning how to play in their MMO backyard.

*NB: The grammar in the above post sucks, but I'm too tired to make it right. Good luck in deciphering it.

[tmp]

Give me an MMO with combat that would be fun even if there weren't a ding attached.  Period.  Jesus, is this hard to comprehend?

And let me guess, not only it "should be fun" but also "done right". And "optimized properly". 

[Venkman]

Give me an MMO with combat that would be fun even if there weren't a ding attached.  Period.  Jesus, is this hard to comprehend?

I think you forgot something there. Like, say, what you're looking for? Even if it's SWG-theming of PS, at least you're defining "fun" for yourself.

Knock on full instancing as much as you like but if taken advantage of it can really put a great emphasis on story and real adventuring.

Nothing wrong with full-instancing, if you're not tied to forcing it into the same mold as WoW.

[DarkSign]

oh no. players dont want fun. they want maximum reward. haven't you been reading this thread?   

[Ratman_tf]

Give me an MMO with combat that would be fun even if there weren't a ding attached.  Period.  Jesus, is this hard to comprehend?

And let me guess, not only it "should be fun" but also "done right". And "optimized properly". 

It just has to pass a simple test.

If you removed xp and loot from defeating mobs in combat, would players still (even if at a reduced rate) fight them?

Eve removed xp from mobs, so it's not an impossible concept.

[Venkman]

Yea, 'cept three things:

1) Is Eve combat fun? I mean fun in a COD4/CoX/Crysis sorta way, not the fun-to-win that is DIKU/casinos.
2) You still defeat mobs for loot.
3) Eve is more of a grind than EQ1 was at times.

I do agree with your Simple Test idea. I just think Eve's the wrong reference. If you want to just stick with MMOs for comparisons, I'd go with something like the JTL (space) portion of SWG, or Planetside (maybe TR), or heck, even just roaming around the city and killing baddies in CoX.

[Ratman_tf]

Yea, 'cept three things:

1) Is Eve combat fun? I mean fun in a COD4/CoX/Crysis sorta way, not the fun-to-win that is DIKU/casinos.
2) You still defeat mobs for loot.
3) Eve is more of a grind than EQ1 was at times.

I do agree with your Simple Test idea. I just think Eve's the wrong reference. If you want to just stick with MMOs for comparisons, I'd go with something like the JTL (space) portion of SWG, or Planetside (maybe TR), or heck, even just roaming around the city and killing baddies in CoX.

Currently, I'm PvEing in Eve to afford bigger ships (Just got into a Battlecruiser last night) and gear for them. It's my money-making activity, so I'm fully aware that Eve still has the loot grind.

Out of your list there, I"ve only played Planetside and Tabula Rasa. Both get boring after a short time, so I'd say the current answer for me is "no".

Thinking about giving players a reason to kill mobs and complete quests and missions usually brings my thoughts back to faction grinding. And that's by definition just another grind. Replace xp with faction points. :P

 

[DarkSign]

Give me an MMO with combat that would be fun even if there weren't a ding attached.  Period.  Jesus, is this hard to comprehend?

And let me guess, not only it "should be fun" but also "done right". And "optimized properly". 

It just has to pass a simple test.

If you removed xp and loot from defeating mobs in combat, would players still (even if at a reduced rate) fight them?

Eve removed xp from mobs, so it's not an impossible concept.

FPS players find games like Crysis, FEAR (I refuse to put in periods), and UT3 (among others) "fun" - so why have mmofps's sucked royally?

[Margalis]

Randomising stuff doesn't add challenge it adds frustration. Most games split PvE into two parts. Firstly there's the bread and butter stuff, the fields of random XP stuff that may or may not have some schtick to hit players with. Then there are the achievement encounters. Stuff that's hard to do, raid content for various definitions of raid. These are the ones with the challenging fights, the difficult skin of your teeth encounters. Some games provide this kind of experience at all character levels so you don't even need to wait till max level to hit the 'fun' PvE.

The history of basically all video games on earth disagree with you. Most games have some randomness built in, especially RPGs. And in fact MMORPGs have plenty of randomness already. (Random damage for example) What you wrote is complete nonsense that doesn't pass a basic smell test. Randomness adds to the frustration? Then how come every RPG on earth is based on dice-rolling mechanics?

If there are two options in front of a player, one of which maximises fun and the second of which maximises reward then players will unerringly choose the latter.

Again this is irrelevant, because fun/challenge can be raised across the board and furthermore the encounters that maxmize reward can be the same as the encounters that maximize fun.

And you know, mostly players just want the reliable XP/gold/magic foozles not the 'OMG how did we make it through that?' experience.

That's because the OMG experience doesn't pay out enough. Insert blurb about game theory here. If players aren't choosing those encounters then you're doing it wrong and need to take some basic math courses. Hint: try raising the reward.

Ideally the harder encounters are worth doing, but if you suck at them you can do the easier trivial stuff for a lower reward. If you make the easier trivial stuff more efficient for all skill levels you have only yourself to blame.

[Jayce]

Give me an MMO with combat that would be fun even if there weren't a ding attached.  Period.  Jesus, is this hard to comprehend?

And let me guess, not only it "should be fun" but also "done right". And "optimized properly". 

It just has to pass a simple test.

If you removed xp and loot from defeating mobs in combat, would players still (even if at a reduced rate) fight them?

You get no xp or loot from killing other players in WoW, yet people do it.  Often.  You don't even get honor from ganking grays, but check out how many marauding 70s hang out in STV.

Maybe the satisfaction of ganking a human (even if they are easier than the easiest mob due to level difference) evens things up?

[Ratman_tf]

FPS players find games like Crysis, FEAR (I refuse to put in periods), and UT3 (among others) "fun" - so why have mmofps's sucked royally?

I wouldn't say they've sucked royally. They do recognize (hopefully) that in order to score a monthly subscription, they've got to offer more than UT3 or Quake Wars. The things they've chosen to offer have been suspect, and the subject of debate.

Planetside was so close it's almost maddening.   

[Ratman_tf]

You get no xp or loot from killing other players in WoW, yet people do it.  Often.  You don't even get honor from ganking grays, but check out how many marauding 70s hang out in STV.

Maybe the satisfaction of ganking a human (even if they are easier than the easiest mob due to level difference) evens things up?

It's the kind of fun you get from pissing in the other team's Gatorade. Not something most game designers want to encourage in their games.

[WindupAtheist]

I think you forgot something there. Like, say, what you're looking for? Even if it's SWG-theming of PS, at least you're defining "fun" for yourself.

Pick any reasonably successful single-player game and MMOify that combat.  I don't care.  It can be fucking Double Dragon for all I care.  But if you released... say... WoW combat as a stand-alone game, it would be laughed off the market because it sucks.

[tmp]

The history of basically all video games on earth disagree with you. Most games have some randomness built in, especially RPGs. And in fact MMORPGs have plenty of randomness already. (Random damage for example) What you wrote is complete nonsense that doesn't pass a basic smell test. Randomness adds to the frustration? Then how come every RPG on earth is based on dice-rolling mechanics?

It's a quite good question, what does hitting one mob for 10, 14, 12 points and another for 12, 10, 14 pointa... add to the experience, really? Short of occasional bitching on the forums when someone rolls miss, miss, miss 5 times in a row.

Tabletop games would use the dice to determine outcomes of players actions, but as the time went on you could read many opinions that good GM should just stick them into orifice of choice and fake the whole thing for good story experience. The computer implementations don't have the luxury of GM to tailor customized experience for every player, so they are still stuck with the dice rolls for these "your skills give you 60% chance to hit a rat" situations. Especially since they throw rats at the player during their play session in so high numbers it'd promptly send any GM attempting to put any meaningful variation into experience... straight to the looney bin.

[Trouble]

Seems to be the new trend in FPSs these days to import the advancement of MMOs into them. Battlefield, Call of Duty, etc. They're all hopping on the bandwagon. I do wish we could get things the other way around, rich world along with fun combat.

[Venkman]

Yes. I don’t need an MMOFPS in the form of PS if they continue adding some persistence to real FPS games.

Out of your list there, I"ve only played Planetside and Tabula Rasa. Both get boring after a short time, so I'd say the current answer for me is "no".

I agree, not lasting in either for any more than a month or two. But I was going entirely by the context of whether players would “still fight them?” if we “removed xp and loot from defeating mobs in combat”. At least those two MMOs attempt something a bit different.

Now imagine Eve without Loot. Would you even log in?

Thinking about giving players a reason to kill mobs and complete quests and missions

The trick is to not think about it that way. Real quests are ongoing story arcs with real decisions and real results, sometimes involving killing. You need to have some ability for the world to change by your actions, which is where the sub-topic of instancing comes in.

But otherwise you’re looking to draw heroes and their friends into a world of adventure, not just mob genocide.

It can be fucking Double Dragon for all I care.

Now, a Double Dragon fighting system in an MMO would be killer. I had so many hopes for that martial arts game that came out, err, what, a year ago? Who cares, doesn’t matter, just another typical grindfest. Because it was WoW with different animations and about 1/10 the speed.

And yes. WoW minus the MMO sucks.

[DarkSign]

I have it on great industry authority (from a top-tier MMO hosting company) that the latency and bandwidth necessary to do a proper hand-to-hand fighting system does exist.
I envisioned it as a key-combo system myself.

1. press mouse button right (kick) or left (punch) and hold - mouse look is on so you can aim in a direction
2. key a 3 button combo from 4 possible keys quickly
3. release mouse button to execute.

2 x 4 x 4 x 4 = 128 moves.

Just a thought on your tangent.

[IainC]

The history of basically all video games on earth disagree with you. Most games have some randomness built in, especially RPGs. And in fact MMORPGs have plenty of randomness already. (Random damage for example) What you wrote is complete nonsense that doesn't pass a basic smell test. Randomness adds to the frustration? Then how come every RPG on earth is based on dice-rolling mechanics?

Of course it's already random but that's not what we are talking about. MMOs are random within very tightly defined limits. You might miss a few times vs a grey mob or your damage is going to vary a little but predictability is built in. If you attack a grey mob you don't expect it to have a 0.00001% chance of murdering your kitted up max level character. It's not a coinflip level of randomness. What we were discussing was making encounters very random, having mobs behave in totally unpredictable ways or pull something far out of left-field to hit you with. Not damage variance or combat algorithms.

If there are two options in front of a player, one of which maximises fun and the second of which maximises reward then players will unerringly choose the latter.

Again this is irrelevant, because fun/challenge can be raised across the board and furthermore the encounters that maxmize reward can be the same as the encounters that maximize fun.

But these are flexible values and not absolute. If there's a 'challenging' encounter that gives a lot of reward and we'll say that it's 'fun' too for whatever value of fun you care to assign, then there's an encounter that can be done reliably which gives averagely good reward, then players will tend to pick the easier one all other things being equal. Suddenly your baseline has changed. The easily farmable encounter is giving more reliable reward over time than the challenging one and so is 'better'.

And you know, mostly players just want the reliable XP/gold/magic foozles not the 'OMG how did we make it through that?' experience.

That's because the OMG experience doesn't pay out enough. Insert blurb about game theory here. If players aren't choosing those encounters then you're doing it wrong and need to take some basic math courses. Hint: try raising the reward.

Ideally the harder encounters are worth doing, but if you suck at them you can do the easier trivial stuff for a lower reward. If you make the easier trivial stuff more efficient for all skill levels you have only yourself to blame.

Most games do that. It's usually called raid content, top drawer items or whatever that only drop from the hardest and most challenging encounters. Players still prefer to farm easy stuff for reliable and efficient rewards. Is it fun? Mostly no. Do players choose to do it anyway for the reasons already stated? Mostly yes. Do they simultaneously bitch about how dull the PvE is and how hard it is to get the good items? You betcha.

[Margalis]

Most games do that. It's usually called raid content, top drawer items or whatever that only drop from the hardest and most challenging encounters. Players still prefer to farm easy stuff for reliable and efficient rewards. Is it fun? Mostly no. Do players choose to do it anyway for the reasons already stated? Mostly yes. Do they simultaneously bitch about how dull the PvE is and how hard it is to get the good items? You betcha.

Um...what?

Players at high levels mostly raid because that's all there is to do. Players at low levels don't raid because there are no raids at low levels. (Or raid loot is outlevelled within hours) I honestly have no idea what you are talking about.

Take your typical MMO and change the hate rules as follows: whenever you take an action the hate you gain, instead of being fixed, is multiplied by some factor. This factor can be as little as 1/10 and as much as 10, although the probability of the endpoints is low. (Some sort of bell-curve distribution)

I just made MMORPGs much better. Wow that was hard.

[tmp]

Take your typical MMO and change the hate rules as follows: whenever you take an action the hate you gain, instead of being fixed, is multiplied by some factor. This factor can be as little as 1/10 and as much as 10, although the probability of the endpoints is low. (Some sort of bell-curve distribution)

I just made MMORPGs much better. Wow that was hard.

Your players take a look at this proposed fix and develop counter-strategy to minimize the risk of group wipe: no one as much as fucking looks at the mob until the tank gets it down to 60-50% health. Then they go on your forum and start bitching how you made the combat 3x as long and how this grind sucks.

[Margalis]

Take your typical MMO and change the hate rules as follows: whenever you take an action the hate you gain, instead of being fixed, is multiplied by some factor. This factor can be as little as 1/10 and as much as 10, although the probability of the endpoints is low. (Some sort of bell-curve distribution)

I just made MMORPGs much better. Wow that was hard.

Your players take a look at this proposed fix and develop counter-strategy to minimize the risk of group wipe: no one as much as fucking looks at the mob until the tank gets it down to 60-50% health. Then they go on your forum and start bitching how you made the combat 3x as long and how this grind sucks.

Nonsense. Players would find an efficient way to maximize XP, not minimize risk. The strategy you propose is not efficient at all, half the group isn't even doing anything half the time. That's worse than the occasional wipe. This is probably what would really happen:

1. The value of versatile character classes would go up and the value of very specific character classes would go down.
2. Group composition would adjust accordingly.
3. Classes like healers and wizards might actually carry around offensive and defensive gear so they can melee or take a few hits if needed.
4. Tank classes might carry around offensive instead of defensive gear so they can pitch in more damage if damage dealers go down.

Again, the important thing to remember is that groups will maximize XP. Minimizing risk is meaningless unless the risk is the risk of not making XP quickly. Having some party members die sometimes can be quite worthwhile in the right circumstances.

With this system you can of course tweak it. If 1/10 to 10x is too much make it 1/2 to 2x.

[Venkman]

Players still prefer to farm easy stuff for reliable and efficient rewards.

That's because that top-tier valuable content is locked behind a huge barrier most people can't overcome. I don't care if it's 5-man, 15-man, or 75-man. If content requires players to consistently schedule repeated visits to the exact some place for the chance for just one of them to get a top-tier item, it's not going to happen nearly as often as a single player solo farming and grinding to get an upgrade.

All people don't want to go from WoW quest blues to Tier 6 BT drops. They just want to continue upgrading at all. And there's a variety of ways to do that which don't require the insane requirements of a Raid.

Take your typical MMO and change the hate rules as follows: whenever you take an action the hate you gain, instead of being fixed, is multiplied by some factor. This factor can be as little as 1/10 and as much as 10, although the probability of the endpoints is low. (Some sort of bell-curve distribution)

I just made MMORPGs much better. Wow that was hard.

Whoa. No. Raids are about gear. These are not fun interactive events with uncertain outcome for 40 people. These are about getting through the various boss fights to upgrade your group for further raids down the road. Think about the cumulative time investment. 20 to 80 hours of investment for one single 2-hour play session. Then add in:

• Non-guaranteed loot
• The chance of someone messing up their role anyway
• Someone not being geared right
• A raid bug
• The fact that more people are reaching that elder game than in any other game prior (both numerically and as a percentage)
  
• That this may be your only path to continued character upgrades at all.

Now you want to add an element of additional failure?

That doesn't make the game more fun at all. That becomes a competitive advantage... for someone else.

[IainC]

Just a note, when I'm talking about 'raid content' I'm not specifically meaning WoW raid content. I'm defining 'raid content' as any encounter that is a harder than average scripted encounter with a better than average reward built in. WoW instances are an example of that but so are DAoC artifact encounters or EvE complexes. Raid content can be soloable and still count as a raid encounter for the purposes of my points above.

[Ratman_tf]

Just a note, when I'm talking about 'raid content' I'm not specifically meaning WoW raid content. I'm defining 'raid content' as any encounter that is a harder than average scripted encounter with a better than average reward built in. WoW instances are an example of that but so are DAoC artifact encounters or EvE complexes. Raid content can be soloable and still count as a raid encounter for the purposes of my points above.

WoW and EQ before it have defined Raid encounters. You don't get to. 

[tmp]

Nonsense. Players would find an efficient way to maximize XP, not minimize risk. The strategy you propose is not efficient at all, half the group isn't even doing anything half the time. That's worse than the occasional wipe.

Safety and predictability first. If it costs them time to the point efficiency start to suffer, they simply bitch about design of your game or move elsewhere.

This is probably what would really happen:

1. The value of versatile character classes would go up and the value of very specific character classes would go down.
2. Group composition would adjust accordingly.

Very fun for people who rolled these character classes and find themselves not needed.

3. Classes like healers and wizards might actually carry around offensive and defensive gear so they can melee or take a few hits if needed.
4. Tank classes might carry around offensive instead of defensive gear so they can pitch in more damage if damage dealers go down.

Very fun both for these classes when they now need to acquire twice as much gear, and for everyone else who suddenly has to compete with more people rolling for such loot.

Again, the important thing to remember is that groups will maximize XP. Minimizing risk is meaningless unless the risk is the risk of not making XP quickly. Having some party members die sometimes can be quite worthwhile in the right circumstances.

There is no experience to gain at the end game. There's only risk of wipe and time wasted to get back where you were and the cost of gear repairs.

And really, what fun does your magic fix add to the whole thing? THat occasionally the mob will hit the damage dealing guy or the healer, and they have to back off, stop use their aggro reducing abilities if they have any and wait for the tank to get mob attention again? It something that already happens in these games, you are only increasing rate of it and possibly throw in couple of "oh fuck" moments when the tank guy gets few bad rolls on their hate gain.

[Venkman]

Just a note, when I'm talking about 'raid content' I'm not specifically meaning WoW raid content. I'm defining 'raid content' as any encounter that is a harder than average scripted encounter with a better than average reward built in. WoW instances are an example of that but so are DAoC artifact encounters or EvE complexes. Raid content can be soloable and still count as a raid encounter for the purposes of my points above.

That describes PvE instances pretty much, even the post 2.3 WoW stuff which dropped the elite tags. CoX instances are soloable (they scale). EQ2 adventure packs were too. Eve has Deep Space for that.

But the widely-held definition of "raid" is a bunch of people getting together to learn or repeat the same content over and over for a specific drop. This is how we got the extra-game systems like DKP, calendars, rotations, etc.

The different encounters you described (and to which SB Banes, PS caps, PotBS port battles, and even pre-made WoW BGs could be added) are all titled differently because the requirements and motivations are different. PvP itself is fluid. You might be there to grind for predictable XP/Honor/APs, but how you do it changes. Raiding is using the same tactic against predictable targets until the devs change stuff

[Hoax]

I've got a long rambling tl;dr type post I'm working on but here's a "quicker" thought, good thread btw folks.

I'm looking forward to more MMO's that are working from any framework that isn't RPG.  I'm sick of mmoRPG's in fact I don't think RPG's are great games all too often in the first place.  They bore me for the same reasons that MMO's do.

-I HATE the random world attacks in RPG's, because combat isn't that fun & that is compounded when I'm trying to get to the next story part of the game but I can't take five steps without being forced into stupid time consuming combat.
-I HATE HATE HATE leveling up so I can beat the next storyline part, or worse yet, getting all the way to a boss and finding out I'm too weak to take them down.  I've stopped playing several good titles for months because that happens.
-I HATE when you get attacked by trivial shit and your just auto attacking and waiting through the animations.  Not surprisingly, those fights remind me of 98% of all the Diku PVE I've ever encountered.
-I am not a big fan of optimizing my character, I hate having to read 3rd party shit to figure out how I can pwn the way I want to.  Or finding out that no, using that weapon is gimped because the best weapon is a sword/axe/whatever so don't use what you thought would be cool.

Basically, I don't really like RPG's too much.  What I do like about them is the story, the world, getting to read/watch something unfold that you are directly influence.  RPG's are like those old books where you pick a choice and turn to the page, but a little bit more cool, sometimes.

Guess what is missing from MMO's?  The only part of the RPG experience that really impresses me.  This is why RPG bastard child MMO's are fucking failuresuck in my eyes.  Can't wait until people start taking FPS, RTS, Adventure, Puzzle, CCG, whateverthefuck else and turning them into persistent worlds/games where you can play with lots of people.

P.S.  I also agree mostly with what Slayer said 2 pages back.

[DarkSign]

I agree with you Hoax.

• Realm vs. Realm gameplay w/ city building & sieging
• RTS gameplay with resource battles and tech-trees for city/guild/player advancement
• No leveling - but skill per use, so that a starting player is viable from the time he logs in and advancement takes someone from average to expert, not noob to average
• A server-wide storyline that individuals and guilds influence by different levels of objectives and meta-objectives
• NPCs that react to those state changes
• stuff to do on the sidelines like in-game distractions that aren't mini-games like jewels but actual side games
• Interaction of the sort you see in puzzle / adventure games / platformers - to flesh out quests and interaction with the physical world (not physics that cant be done over networks, but interactive objects like the kinds that work in the HeroEngine MMO engine)
  

bah...I'll just stop there...I could go on for pages with what I want.

[Johny Cee]

The different encounters you described (and to which SB Banes, PS caps, PotBS port battles, and even pre-made WoW BGs could be added) are all titled differently because the requirements and motivations are different. PvP itself is fluid. You might be there to grind for predictable XP/Honor/APs, but how you do it changes. Raiding is using the same tactic against predictable targets until the devs change stuff

PvP,  by and large,  is just as predictable.

Tactics are min/maxed to hell and back until everyone has an acceptable role in what they should be doing,  especially in formats with heavy rewards (see WoW Premade groups, GW ladder system, DAoC gank groups/8 man guilds, etc.)

Plus,  PvP usually has a fairly extensive "social grind",  where you have to grind up acquaintances and reputation until you get invited to the right guild/clan/groups.

[Venkman]

What changes more often? The actions of a boss mob or tactics in PvP? Dunno how it is today, but every BG match I was different. Usually because the one tactic the "leader" wanted to follow wasn't being followed

This is very different from zone in, pull each elite, move to boss and five cronies, and follow the wiki guide on the proper pull and defeat strategy.

Wish-list

EQ2 (with adventure packs) meets a functioning SB. Sign me up!

[sidereal]

Safety and predictability first.

This is true in high end WoW-style raids, and it's true because lethality is high.  Any environment with a high penalty for failure (see permadeath) will increase safe play.  Generally safe play isn't very fun or at least it takes a lot longer than unsafe play.  In WoW raids, failure is a wipe and an incredibly time consuming raid reorganization at best, and at worst you call it for the night for no joy. 


Consider this, different, model: all raids will probably be successful (in the sense that the bosses will be killed).  Likelihood of a complete wipe is very low.  The payout for an 'unsuccessful' raid (bosses die, but slowly and after a few player deaths) is low.  The payout for a 'very successful' raid (bosses are killed quickly with few or no player deaths) is very high.  Just scale the gear and xp drops to how well the raid did.  Now your penalty for failure is small.  In fact, it's not even a boolean pass/fail anymore.  It's a spectrum of success, like a leaderboard.  People love leaderboards because you don't have to be first to feel like you're doing well, or improving, or at least better than the schmucks below you. 

WoW raids are simply succeed/fail.  No leaderboard.  Keeping them tough requires keeping the succeed rate somewhat low, which necessarily means keeping the fail rate high, and fails suck.  Lower penalty for failure and variable degrees of success will increase risk-taking behavior in groups looking to dominate the leaderboard (or get the epic gear), rather than decrease it.  Risk taking behavior will be lower in groups that just want to get the minimum gear (or attunement, or whatever).  Which, I think, is how people want it.

[sidereal]

I should add that this is why I hate survival horror.  Increased lethality means increased play safety.  I have to peek around every corner fifteen times and carefully aim for headshots to conserve ammo.  Guess what?  Not fun.