It's not you, it's me.

[Rasix]

I still remember a 5 hour + corpse recovery from a failed small group Plane of Life (or whatever the place was with the fauns) attempt.  I was so goddamn miserable.  I had a test the next morning or as it turned out.. 2 in hours from the actual finish.   Plus I lost like a week or two worth of EXP. 

FUCK YAH.

[Sjofn]

DAoC's PvE taught me and Ingmar a valuable lesson in pairing our classes properly, at least. Thane + Skald did not make for a good duo. 

[Tale]

Nobody thought there would ever be people who remembered EQ planar corpse runs fondly, after all.

I hated EQ planar corpse runs too! I hated limping 30km back to Krakow on a slow leak after multiple punctures, thinking what the fuck is this fucking shit I am doing with my life.

But I fondly remember drinking with people I met in Krakow and many other memories after that, between the lows. I fondly remember when I got my EQ corpse back. I fondly remember good times helping a friend who permanently lost his corpse re-equip. Re-planning a player city in SWG after the other team destroyed all our bases. I didn't get those feelings in WoW, so I associate higher highs with game design that includes the risk of horrible lows.

The standard F13 response over the years is the hammer-to-the-testicles analogy. Well, maybe I'm just one of those crazy people on Japanese game shows willing to try and dodge the hammer to the testicles if the TV station will reward me if I make it.

[Fordel]

You'll find someone who remembers it fondly, or backtracks and says, "Well it really wasn't as bad as people made it out to be.  They were just upset by the justified XP nerf and made it out to be worse than it was."  Guarantee it.

Nobody thought there would ever be people who remembered EQ planar corpse runs fondly, after all.

There was that one PvE server, but they basically had fake RvR vs. AI bots or whatever too.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Nobody thought there would ever be people who remembered EQ planar corpse runs fondly, after all.

I hated EQ planar corpse runs too! I hated limping 30km back to Krakow on a slow leak after multiple punctures, thinking what the fuck is this fucking shit I am doing with my life.

But I fondly remember drinking with people I met in Krakow and many other memories after that, between the lows. I fondly remember when I got my EQ corpse back. I fondly remember good times helping a friend who permanently lost his corpse re-equip. Re-planning a player city in SWG after the other team destroyed all our bases. I didn't get those feelings in WoW, so I associate higher highs with game design that includes the risk of horrible lows.

The standard F13 response over the years is the hammer-to-the-testicles analogy. Well, maybe I'm just one of those crazy people on Japanese game shows willing to try and dodge the hammer to the testicles if the TV station will reward me if I make it.

Seriously?

[Tale]

Seriously?

Seriously what? I'm just making fun of myself for having such a different opinion to most of F13. I am serious however that I think gameplay with the potential for greater disasters provides greater highs when the player does well.

I don't like it when players get input on every design decision, because players fuck it up by always demanding more candy, and whining about everything that is not candy. I like designers to design. Damn the torpedoes.

[Nevermore]

You clearly need to be playing Eve, not WoW.

[Setanta]

Eve isn't a hammer to the balls though.

It's more of a rusty nail hammered through your balls.

[Paelos]

Here's the most important thing GC learned via twitter:

Player:the most important thing you guys learned from Cata going into Mists?
GC: Don't let players quickly run out of things to do!

[Rokal]

Here's the most important thing GC learned via twitter:

Player:the most important thing you guys learned from Cata going into Mists?
GC: Don't let players quickly run out of things to do!

What's the problem with this?

[Paelos]

Nothing, it doesn't have to be all bad points with GC. I know many of us wondered what some of the guys took away from Cataclysm.

Obviously he's in twitter so he can't go deeper, but I'd be interested to see if that kind of mentality lead to the stance on dailies.

[Draegan]

I love a good Risk vs. Reward debate.

Most MMORPGs today, when you consider PVE, have nearly zero risk other than wasted time playing a game.  Of course you can expand to your argument that every is in blocks of time, but you really need to get up close and define time spent vs. time spent having fun.

In WOW, when you die, lose or wipe, you lose time.  A period of hours spent trying to beat a raid boss and getting nothing.  Or running out of playing time because you have responsibilities so you couldn't achieve whatever you wanted to do.  That's pretty much all you risk to lose.  Armor durability costs are essentially nothing now since money has been incredibly inflated.  So your loss in-game is absolutely zero.

IN EQ, when you died, wiped etc., you would lose experience and potentially, all your equipment.  This risk was diminished over time due to xp resses and corpse summoners and the like, however the risk is still time.  But MORE time.  When you died, you not only wasted time attempting and not completing your objective, you then would have to spend additional time the next day recovering experience.  When you lost loot, you lost an amazing amount of progress and could seriously be hampered by it.  This was mostly a reflection because gear was somewhat rare (vs. tons of gear in Diablo).

Yes it's still time, but there are variations.

I think what Tale is saying is that he wants a game that has high risk (read: challenge) versus reward.  There's a reason why slot machines are fun to a lot of people.  It's not a black and white system though, and you can go and argue how much or how little you lose or win etc.  Who cares.

The point is that Tale is right, there is room for a game that is equally punishing and rewarding.  Paelos boiled down the argument that all games should just be easy for the most part.  WOW has moved so far into the easy of play and ease of access it's impossible to work that model into the game these days.  But future games can certainly develop a risk of loss that doesn't completely smash you in the nuts every time.  It would be a welcome change/re-emergence, and obviously it wouldn't be for everyone.

[Merusk]

I don't disagree that there's room for that game - if properly executed.  Vanguard had a lot of hype before it released as a shitty half-completed mess.  They, frankly, aimed too fucking high.  Seems to be a frequent theme for MMO devs. 

Perhaps someday we'll get someone who plans, narrows their focus and executes well this vision of using the big-boy slots vs the penny slots we prefer.  With the shift to F2P, however, this becomes far more unlikely since its advocates seemed focused on a sub model. 

Which is downright silly, because it would be incredibly profitable, so long as you properly balanced the Time vs Money risk.  In the EQ days people bitched that their jobs prevented them from competing with the kids who had 12-16 hours to chunk into the game.   Allowing people to have increased drops, better xp rates, corpse summons, etc for cash you allowed people to decide: Time or Money.  You just can't wall-off huge chunks of the game behind a pay wall when doing so.

You know.. kind of like how the Koreans have done for YEARS now. 

[Fabricated]

Punishing the shit out of me for losing in a game just gives me stress, which is the exact opposite thing I play for.

[Merusk]

Oh.. also meant to say - THIS ISN'T THAT GAME.  That boat sailed 8 years ago, trying to bring it about now is begging for an NGE-level drop in subs.

[Draegan]

It doesn't have to be that drastic as penny slots vs. whatever.

Why not create a full loot PVP game?  Most people will think you're crazy because, "OMG FULL LOOT!" and then call the mental hospital or go sit on the other side of the room.  The reason why people hate it is because the focus of these game is highly weighted on gear or loot.

But what if you make games where loot is either de-emphasized or easier to get?  Why not make gear more prevalent like in Diablo or Borderlands?  There are other solutions that are pretty obvious and easy to implement if you get out of the rut of making your game all about leveling from 1-X over X hours and then creating a gear-centric grind.

Even in PVE games you don't need exp loss or gear loss to create risk.

Or why not create a PVE game like EVE?  Have a world where you have a core of safe zones.  It's littered with fast travel nodes like GW2. When you die you just spawn back at a node.  Then have surrounding zones that do not have fast travel access and are harder to walk through and travel through.  Dying pops you back into the nearest safe area node of your choice.  Of course you have to design your PVE combat experience so when you're much more powerful or durable that your WOW character.  One or two creatures usually can't kill you unless you're retarded.  Making fleeing/retreating easier.  The stuff you get in the harder areas is just as good as the stuff you get in safe areas, but it's less time inducing to get.  Safe area has smaller drop percentages or requires more tokens and harder areas have the opposite.

Now I'm getting way to devchair stupid but you get the point.  There are plenty of ways to create challenge, risk and fun gameplay that doesn't punch you in the nuts and throw your monitor out the window.

[Ingmar]

I think what Tale is saying is that he wants a game that has high risk (read: challenge) versus reward.

Challenge and risk are not the same thing. They're not even really related.

[Draegan]

Punishing the shit out of me for losing in a game just gives me stress, which is the exact opposite thing I play for.

That's the thing though, what exactly "Punishing the shit out of you" mean?  There are plenty of single player games out there that give you a finite number of continues or lives.  Or forcing you to repeat content if you lose.  Sometimes you have to repeat a lot of content sometimes they make you repeat a single fight over again.

It really depends honestly.  Do I think players should lose a half a level that took 5 hours of mindless grinding to get? No way in hell because that's fucking retarded.  Grinding for 5 hours is fucking retarded and hopefully your game is a tad more imaginative than that.  In a game where the main purpose it to collect equipment and equipment takes hours/days/months to make or earn you should not ever have a chance to lose it due to game mechanics.

It all matters on balance of design.  I like the idea of a bit of risk other than "Run back from spawn" in some of my games.

[Draegan]

I think what Tale is saying is that he wants a game that has high risk (read: challenge) versus reward.

Challenge and risk are not the same thing. They're not even really related.

In a vacuum?  No.  But in this context they are very related.

[Fabricated]

Punishing the shit out of me for losing in a game just gives me stress, which is the exact opposite thing I play for.

That's the thing though, what exactly "Punishing the shit out of you" mean?  There are plenty of single player games out there that give you a finite number of continues or lives.  Or forcing you to repeat content if you lose.  Sometimes you have to repeat a lot of content sometimes they make you repeat a single fight over again.

It really depends honestly.  Do I think players should lose a half a level that took 5 hours of mindless grinding to get? No way in hell because that's fucking retarded.  Grinding for 5 hours is fucking retarded and hopefully your game is a tad more imaginative than that.  In a game where the main purpose it to collect equipment and equipment takes hours/days/months to make or earn you should not ever have a chance to lose it due to game mechanics.

It all matters on balance of design.  I like the idea of a bit of risk other than "Run back from spawn" in some of my games.

I think intractable difficulty in MMOs makes for a really small niche customerbase.

I consider anything where a failure state puts me in a position to do not fun shit to get back to doing fun shit. The worse the ratio of unfun:fun gets, the more annoyed I get.

I mean, I played WoW because my friends played it. It was a solid MMO in my opinion but I wasn't a super oldschool MMO burnout then. I got fucking annoyed with the game and ended by sub the first time after 6+ uninterrupted years because they made the game so hard I couldn't actually play it with my friends. You stratify your playerbase to the point where you're splitting up groups of people who want to play together and huh, people quit in droves.

And open no-holds-barred full-loot PVP is the whole "All wolves and no sheep" shit someone else summarized better than me on some blog.

[Draegan]

I think intractable difficulty in MMOs makes for a really small niche customerbase.

I consider anything where a failure state puts me in a position to do not fun shit to get back to doing fun shit. The worse the ratio of unfun:fun gets, the more annoyed I get.

I mean, I played WoW because my friends played it. It was a solid MMO in my opinion but I wasn't a super oldschool MMO burnout then. I got fucking annoyed with the game and ended by sub the first time after 6+ uninterrupted years because they made the game so hard I couldn't actually play it with my friends. You stratify your playerbase to the point where you're splitting up groups of people who want to play together and huh, people quit in droves.

And open no-holds-barred full-loot PVP is the whole "All wolves and no sheep" shit someone else summarized better than me on some blog.

I agree for the most part.  No game should make you do prolonged unfun shit to get back to the fun, it's an incredibly difficult thing to balance.  It very much matters how the game is played and it's hard not to put in the context of WOW or EQ.

I never played Cata.  My highest level WOW character is level 80 I think.  But from the minimal exposure I got from the Cata Heroics (youtube) I don't think the mechanics were very difficult, it was the math.  Blizzard didn't create the proper ramp up in gear power to heroics.  Either quests didn't provide enough gear or there wasn't a level of dungeons that could get you to that point.  So instead players were mana starved or getting hit too hard, or avoidance wasn't high enough.

I could be wrong though since I didn't experience it.  Was it really the mechanics that were too mind boggling?

As to full loot pvp, it's a game style plenty of people enjoy but doesn't really work in the realm of WOW/EQ gameplay.  But if you create a game that is more arcade-like and gear is not super special, it could make a very interesting game.  If you want to read a 3000 word idea I wrote recently for shits and giggles, I'll link it, but I doubt very much anyone gives a shit.

[Tale]

The point is that Tale is right, there is room for a game that is equally punishing and rewarding.

Thank you, please tie yourself to this stake and get the marshmallows ready.

Oh.. also meant to say - THIS ISN'T THAT GAME.  That boat sailed 8 years ago, trying to bring it about now is begging for an NGE-level drop in subs.

I don't think anybody was asking for changes to WoW, just discussing what could be in a game, in the context of the WoW experience.

[Draegan]

Tale inspired a new avatar for myself.

[Paelos]

I have no problem with stratifed difficulties in games. I would have no problem if WoW wanted to introduce a kick-me-in-the-jimmy mode for people that enjoy that shit, go nuts.

Options are good. Gating is bad. Enforced difficulties are bad. Forcing people progress through prior content to get to new content is bad.

[Sheepherder]

I never played Cata.  My highest level WOW character is level 80 I think.  But from the minimal exposure I got from the Cata Heroics (youtube) I don't think the mechanics were very difficult, it was the math.  Blizzard didn't create the proper ramp up in gear power to heroics.  Either quests didn't provide enough gear or there wasn't a level of dungeons that could get you to that point.  So instead players were mana starved or getting hit too hard, or avoidance wasn't high enough.

I could be wrong though since I didn't experience it.  Was it really the mechanics that were too mind boggling?

A little bit of that.

Moreover, they were linear corridors of particularly uninspiring design stuffed with ball crushing trash pack grinds with all AoE in the game being nerfed to shit in 4.0.

[Tale]

I have no problem with stratifed difficulties in games. I would have no problem if WoW wanted to introduce a kick-me-in-the-jimmy mode for people that enjoy that shit, go nuts.

People who win the kick-me-in-the-jimmy mode would receive greater rewards than you. Would you accept that? You can't have one without the other.

[Draegan]

I have no problem with stratifed difficulties in games. I would have no problem if WoW wanted to introduce a kick-me-in-the-jimmy mode for people that enjoy that shit, go nuts.

Options are good. Gating is bad. Enforced difficulties are bad. Forcing people progress through prior content to get to new content is bad.

Your post makes no sense.  Gating is fine as long as it's not retarded.  Not letting people do zone A until their level X is gating.  That's fine.  Whats bad about gating it putting content behind shitty boring mechanics that make you want to shoot yourself, like rep grinds behind rep grinds.  But some sort of gating is good because it shows progress and gives you something to work towards.  You just have to make sure that the process of going through the gates is really fun and accessible.

You just hate WOW gating, which has the track record of being awful.

WOW system of difficulty is bad though.  LRF, Normal, Heroic, 10 man 25 man Thunderforged, fuck that shit.  Sometimes more options is awful, dilutes the product and makes things retarded.

[Paelos]

I have no problem with stratifed difficulties in games. I would have no problem if WoW wanted to introduce a kick-me-in-the-jimmy mode for people that enjoy that shit, go nuts.

People who win the kick-me-in-the-jimmy mode would receive greater rewards than you. Would you accept that? You can't have one without the other.

Yes you can. If you enjoy difficulty play. If not, fuck off with it. This isn't about your bizarro version of needing to be coddled to play hard mode. Give them cosmetics. Stroke egos. Give them shining lights that follow them around. Give them adjusted drop rates for the same stuff. Just don't fuck up the game for the rest of us with gating by gear.

[Paelos]

You just hate WOW gating, which has the track record of being awful.

WOW system of difficulty is bad though.  LRF, Normal, Heroic, 10 man 25 man Thunderforged, fuck that shit.  Sometimes more options is awful, dilutes the product and makes things retarded.

First of all gating is stupid because if you believe that there is any modicum of skill involved, let the deaths sort out where you can go and what you can do. Not an arbitrary number.

Second, the problem right now is that all those difficulties carry different gear, not different chances at the same gear. The gear has numbers, those numbers are averaged and those determine who can queue for what. The stratification of gear is the issue, not the content. If there were different percentages to get the same gear, or offerings of different points for completion to buy gear, this would be less of an issue.

[Tale]

I have no problem with stratifed difficulties in games. I would have no problem if WoW wanted to introduce a kick-me-in-the-jimmy mode for people that enjoy that shit, go nuts.

People who win the kick-me-in-the-jimmy mode would receive greater rewards than you. Would you accept that? You can't have one without the other.

Yes you can. If you enjoy difficulty play. If not, fuck off with it. This isn't about your bizarro version of needing to be coddled to play hard mode. Give them cosmetics. Stroke egos. Give them shining lights that follow them around. Give them adjusted drop rates for the same stuff. Just don't fuck up the game for the rest of us with gating by gear.

Nobody will take the risk of bigger penalties without the chance of bigger rewards for success. They won't do it for shiny lights.

Nobody wants harsh penalties in isolation. I don't even want changes to WoW, so I don't know why you feel threatened.

I just prefer higher virtual stakes in a game.

[Paelos]

I'll let you play the martyr in your head then.

[Zetor]

Some people play challenge modes (which are basically timed runs through harder versions of 5man dungeons where your gear scales down to the dungeon's level) -- it doesn't really give loot, but it gives recognition, shiny armor, mounts, titles, has its own leaderboards, etc.

Is that challenging enough?

[Tannhauser]

In 1997 I got on an $850 bicycle in Scotland and cycled to Poland...cool story...Maybe I have become a different beast.

I'm sure you've seen things people wouldn't believe, like, attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion, and c-beams glittering in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All that aside what does your story have to do with how wow is now shitty because of people like you?

Stay away from my gate.

[Draegan]

You just hate WOW gating, which has the track record of being awful.

WOW system of difficulty is bad though.  LRF, Normal, Heroic, 10 man 25 man Thunderforged, fuck that shit.  Sometimes more options is awful, dilutes the product and makes things retarded.

First of all gating is stupid because if you believe that there is any modicum of skill involved, let the deaths sort out where you can go and what you can do. Not an arbitrary number.

Second, the problem right now is that all those difficulties carry different gear, not different chances at the same gear. The gear has numbers, those numbers are averaged and those determine who can queue for what. The stratification of gear is the issue, not the content. If there were different percentages to get the same gear, or offerings of different points for completion to buy gear, this would be less of an issue.

Gating is not stupid, it's part of game theory.  You must do A before B.  You can't just buy WOW and hop into the latest raid; that would invalidate the whole model.  I mean if you wanted to get rid of gating, you could just be given a character, eliminate gear, and just play WOWRaid where you just sit in a lobby waiting for a raid to pop and just raid all night for getting scores and achievements and some other level of superfluous progression.

But the reality is you need gating to give a player a sense of progression if you're playing the whole traditional MMORPG.  You need to level.  You need to do heroics.  You need a certain level of stats before raid B then C.  I guess you can buypass tiers if you have friends willing to carry you, but those gates are still there forcing you to level to 90 or whatever max level is. 

Gates or milestones work as long as you don't do them retardedly.

To the second point its a matter of taste I suppose, but the way WOW has it set up with different levels of different raids with different numbers of people is just stupid.  3 Tiers of the same raid with like 4-6 levels of gear all layered in with each other?  Talk about shitty design.  I guess the game is old and you really can't do anything about it, but that shit needs to scale dynamically these days.  I guess it's a bandaid.  I hope any future game Blizzard makes that has raiding in it doesn't do anything this retarded again.

[Paelos]

There's a difference between gating and just dying.

If you don't belong in a raid, you die. Don't decide for me on the front end that I have to have X amount of gear. What if other people have the gear? What if I have the gear and want to bring a friend in? What if I have an alt and we're rolling them through? The gating gets in the way of that.

You can put in progression without putting in gates. In my mind, gates are the artificial barriers to content. You must be level x to get in this, you must have ilvl y to join, you must do this attunement, you must have completed this quest.

As far as you argument that gates exist so you don't do things retardedly, I counter that the gates exist to restrict your flow as a monetary device and nothing more. The gates exist to keep you subbed. In a F2P model, the gates would be money paid to enter something, instead of time.