Your numbers are way off.  Try 5% or less actually look for a challenge.  'Earn'?  pft...

In the long ago days, previous to computer MMO's, as you 'progressed', the world around you became more difficult.  In miniture and board games like D&D/AD&D around to pinball/arcade games.  As you progressed, it became more and more difficult -- not more time consuming all the time, just more difficult as things moved faster, etc...  but with MMO's it's gotten sloppier and sloppier and PvP mindset players are always looking for an ez-mode *I WIN* switch that they can use to insta-win against opponents.  Very few are actually interested in competition, the vast majority want an I win button.

I recall back when I played WoW...  They adjusted the PvP rewards so that anyone could 'earn' them fairly easily -- right before an expansion...  TBC I think.  The old warlords/grand marshal types threw a fit.  They were getting their brains stomped out by people who hadn't 'earned' that gear like thay had.  When others had those top end weapons, the "I hit you and you die because I'm so good!' was easily seen for what it was -- sloppy players packing over-kill items that could NOT compete against others when the gear matched up. "But I play more!  I EARNED it!" -- and are so gimp that someone who just got it "the easy way" kicked your brains out 1vs1...  Ain't life unfair at times when your sorry lameness is being shown like this.

As for 'earning' in PvE -- again...  5% or LESS actually look for challenges and its been that way for a LONG time.  Look at the whine posts from your 'top guilds'/players when "new content" is released about "share the tactics on how to beat this pace!  It's not fair that you're keeping secrets!" etc... etc... etc... while the actual "earners" are still busy figuring it out. 

With point-by-point instructions they can follow, most will do the encounters but, without them, your "top raiders" will sit, whine and wait for someone to tell them what to do.  Only a HANDFUL ever are willing to try 'new content' without that preset roadmap of instructions. That got so "rough" that many games now turn the 'beta testing' of the next expansion into a documentation fest for "early triers" so the roadmaps can be ready when it goes live.

LAME comes to mind more so than "earning" with the vast amounts of sheeple waiting for someone else to figure out how things "are best" so they can follow those guides on "how to win" -- without ever figuring jack squat out on their own and that's from M59/UO days into EQ up through today's most recent entries into the field.  "Where's the "I win" route and instructions on how to be the best?" followed by "I play more so I deserve my I WIN gear..."

Not very nice sounding but a hell of a lot more accurate than most of the 'earning' comments in this thread and yes... I have been among those who "did it first", back a ways in my gaming.  I recall dieing so many times gear busted and/or losing levels but we kept working the places - 1 fight at a time -- to figure out how the hell to beat it.  I even 'faked' a strategy post once so a group I was in would TRY an "undocumented" encounter...  They didn't want to try it without "instructions" so we went to the web -- I to create one, them to keep looking.  After we beat the place, I updated my "fake" post and it became one of those "gospils" others followed on how to beat the place...

So respect for 'earning'? try again...  I have little respect for most that "claim" they've earned anything by following instruction sheets, wearing gear any moron could get if they spent enough time playing and claiming it's "earned"...

I say why not have a bit of both?

Trying to aim for one or the other group is fine but their are plenty in between willing to do a little work and people can change where they are on this based on real life things which could cause them to fall out of the bracket the game is aimed for.

What I think we need is a way for casual and hardcore players to interact (not compete) effectively in an mmo.

I'll give examples from two games eve and wow.

In eve you have one half of the solution done extremely well, day old characters can join in a battle with 6 year old veterans, sure it would be a long time before they could compete in a 1v1 and the 6 yr old is contributing a lot more but they both have their roles that are necessary they are interacting effectively. Wow has the exact opposite of this with "the game starts at 80" attitude and limits on dungeons and groups that won't let you in until you have x gear score.

The other half of the solution is done rather well by wow, when a player jumps on it should only take them a few minutes to get in a arena battle or jump in a battleground and your fighting for the horde/alliance. They can't round up all their guild mates for a raid in 5 minutes time but if you can only log on for only an hour you won't be stuck to only interacting with the npc's or playing with yourself. Eve on the other hand requires a lot more time and organisation to do things. Even getting on at the right time you could take up to 15-30 minutes to get ship and for the fleet to form up, another 15-30 minutes getting to the enemy space and now it's time for you to log off, also lots of time spent moving stuff around between homes that change every few months farming isk for new ships/equipment/skills. Despite the skill system eve requires you to spend a lot of time to interact with others properly, while wow once you've reached a high level you can play it pretty casually.

What I would like to see in a game is the ability to interact with others effectivly from day one as a casual player. I want to empthasise again interact, not compete. Sure the guy who plays all the time will have a larger affect on the game and he'll know a lot more about the game and he's played longer so he could beat you 1v1 but you and him should be able to get together and play and you will contribute to a battle, without having to go through massive amounts of organisation to get there.

In my personal opinion the best way to do this is to make clever use of NPC's. I'm currently studying AI/game making so I'm biased, feel free to ignore anything past here, in fact it's probably better if you do.

Having a constant battle between sides at certain areas with npc's trying push each other back and take control points. A casual player can join up and jump straight in amongst the rank and file without having to wait half an hour for some enemies or allies to show up, a hardcore player can sit their all day leading a small section of the army to take certain goals. With the hard core player being used to commanding around armies of npc's adding in a player amonst them should be pretty fluid, adding a bunch of hardcore players to fill vital roles in his minions should also work so not all older players are having to take a  command position. You'd also need to allow players to roam free and not join the command structure, otherwise you might end up causing it to feel too much like work.

The other thing you'll need is a way to stop it being a race/grind to end game so you'r all elite soldiers and commanders. In eve they achieve this by having you drop all items on death so you end up in more of a cycle instead of a straight climb.

My solution is to have a scaleable death penalty that gives bonuses for each death penalty you add and also lets you unlock higher/more skills. Before going into each battle you would choose your death penalties and what skills you would use sorta like a respec in wow or refit in eve. Death penalties would include permanant loss at higher levels such as item drop, skill loss and perma death (as the final penalty) to keep players in a sort of advancemend cycle, they could still advance horizontally though by training up different weapons so you could keep advancing in some way without having to take a death penalty you don't want.

Theres still the problem of players creating work for themselves by grinding their way to maxing all their skills on some character just because they "need everything max" which I havn't been able to think up a way around yet (eve's time based skill system has some very nice points).

I enjoyed running heroics in WoW back in the TBC days. I played both a hunter, and a resto shaman healer.

Whilst hunters were seen by many as an easy mode class (and they were in raids and whilst levelling), I found plenty of challenge for my hunter in heroics. I had to master skills such as chain trapping, double trapping, kiting, using misdirections right, whilst all the while keeping an eye on my threat, my pet and what else was happening in the group - e.g. was our healer in trouble? Was there something I could do to help? What would I do if one of my traps broke early, and the next one wasn't ready - could I improvise some way of keeping both myself and the healer alive? Doing some of the TBC heroics in blue gear was fun!

I just can't seem to get that challenge from Warcraft any more. The heroics are all trivial, unless you play a tank whose gearing up, in which case they are simply frustrating (or rather the other players are!). Raiding is monotonous. Farming the same place over and over for months in 10 and 25 man modes, and then doing it all over again for hard modes.

The choice for me in Warcraft at the moment is between no challenge and no fun.

Other similar games (LOTRO, EQ2) also seem to have similar problems.
Vanguard seems to contain some nice challenges, but hardly any population or developer support.

I'm keeping my eye open for alternatives. Maybe FF XIV? Maybe Rift? Not sure. Hope something comes along.

Guess I'll be spending a little more time on Starcraft II as well.

I feel like "working for stuff" tends to be a symptom of a larger issue I have with a lot of MMOs: the gear grind. People are so caught up with the proper way to obtain the best gear, while I find the gear grind itself the problem.  I prefer gear to be the means, not the end.  Things like SWG with clothing/housing is a different matter though.

Originally posted by Ihmotepp

First, I want a game that has bench marks. For me, the bench mark will always be the easiest way you can accomplish a task. Anything else is just added fluff that is meaningless.

For example, you can kill 10,000 Goblins to get to level 2. Or, there is a slider, and you can kill 1 goblin to get to level two.

The bench mark for level 2, is killing one goblin. Doing anythying else, is a waste of time, and is not fun, nor is it a challenge, nor does it have any meaning whatsoever.

This is why I don't like scaling dungeons.

The other issue is we all have a perception of when something is to easy, just right, kinda hard but doable, and a boring grind that we won't suffer through, and will just cancel the sub. 

It's not possible to hit that setting perfect for everyone.

And for me, the "scaling" solutions are worthless, because the only thing that means anything in the game, is the easiest setting.

Doing anything else is like having sex with a pig. Sure, you can do it, but why?

I think in terms of benchmarks as well.  However, I set my benchmarks on whether I am still learning anything from given content. 

So with the 'kill goblins to get to level 2', I feel that killing a single goblin will not really teach me anything about combat in the game or how goblin mobs function.  I would say that 20 goblins would be about the right amount at which I am not really learning anything more about it and I am ready to move to new content (and new learnign opportunities). 

So anything under 10 goblins killed is a waste of content and anything above 30 goblins becomes a waste of time.  Within that range you learned the important things about that content and are still learning the finer details.  And if you are not learning anything important from a piece of content then it might as well be a waste of time.

The thing about scaling content difficulty is that if you just scale the time it takes then it is a waste since you really do not learn anything from it beyond endurance.  So any hardmode content cannot just increase the amount of hitpoints  mob has but has to make the mob behave differently enough so the players have to teach themselves new ways of fighing that encounter.  Then it becomes meaningfull content.

Of course some people, like Ihmotepp, only care about the numerical value of their epeen so they will only take the easiest path and pretend it is the same accomplishment as taking the challenging path.

Originally posted by midmagic

Originally posted by Psychow

I've never understood why players who prefer to play casually instead of high end raid even need the epic gear.

Fore example in WoW:

If their playstyle is to grind rep, solo quests and do 5-man dungeons, why do they need super awesome epics? With blue quality max-level gear they can do everything they have chosen to participate in quite easily. Obtaining epic quality gear makes all their game play trivial and boring.

Yet WoW is handing out epics like there's no tomorrow and has essentially removed any sense of joy/accomplishment in obtaining those rewards now that everyone is "entitled" to get them.

The problem with WoW is that they screwed up the sense of character progression in WoTLK. Epics for rep grinders, solo questers, and 5 man runners is fine. They just "forgot" to add content to justify recieving epics and content to put the epics to use.

For example, first, grind green level dungeons to get blue gears. Next, grind blue level dungeons to get purple gears. Finally, purple level dungeons with some sort of leet appearance (or whatever) rewards for the sake of rewards. Green level dungeons rewarding purples was amazingly rediculous on top of having zero content to progress into once the green level dungeons were completed.

Having paths for all players to recieve top quality gear is fine as long as the effort to recieve the gear is justified. Except perhaps for solo players considering the difficulty in making content challenging for all classes in a game where characters have highly defined roles.

There is no problem. It is a problem if you think a purple item is good but no one knows the game think that way.

People look at ITEM LEVEL .. and if you get an hardmode item, there is a little green "heroic" under the name of the item.

And those *are* hard to get. Think of it this way:

L251 epic = green

L264 epic = blue

H model epic = purple. They just distinguish the three with different methods other than the color of the item.

Originally posted by FreddyNoNose

Originally posted by Ceridith

Originally posted by uquipu

They need a slider like in Dragon Age Origins
.
Easy _________ Normal _______ Hard _______ Insane
.
On insane it takes a half an hour to kill a mob that can one shot you.
.
But everyone gets the same reward because we all pay $15 a month and not everyone has the time these days.

What works for a single player game, doesn't work for a multi-player game where players using different difficulty levels interact.

That the option to make things easier exists, and that other people take advantage of it, depreciates the value of taking the harder path. Particularly when people of varying difficulties interact, which they will because it's an MMO.

If on the other hand, the difficulties are split between servers, then you can pull it off by having "casual" and "hardcore" servers.

 City of heroes has a difficulty setting.  It's worked for years.

WOW has two raiding difficulties (if you count 10 man vs 25 man .. 4 difficulties) since WOTLK and it works well.

Originally posted by Lord.Bachus
In THE old day you had to work hard long time to get THE stuff you wanted in game. Nowerdays in modern day mmo it is much more instant gratification. Many people want to go back to THE old days, but why? I am working hard all day at work and thats no fun, in THE evening i want to have fun, and in my world hard work and labour are not fun. In real life i am an archeiver, but when playing my online adventures i love to be immersed intoo THE world. so THE only plagers that want it to be hard to aquire stuff in games are THE natural archeivers, which are only about 25% max probably even less people.

When a game becomes a WORK, there is a big problem with the game and how you play it.

In the old days the games were less about the stuff, and more about the people around you, for the most part. The effort wasn't necessarily in jumping through hoops to kill the big bad monster, it was being nice and helpful enough that you were able to get enough people together to help you when you needed it.

The problem with MMO's nowadays is not the difficulty level. They are all pretty easy.

The actual problem is that these people that want to "work" in video games have a complex and want to feel special by showing off to other players. This is because they fail at life, so they need some reason to feel accomplished. If you don't care that some guy is running around with the same stuff as you and satisfied that you could pwn him anyway, YOU are one of these people.

These people who proclaim themselves "hardcore" are the reason that the communities on most games are decaying. They are the real reason why stupid things like gear score, achievement checks, etc. exist. They have some need to feel special, so they create barriers to stop others from achieving what they have. Once others have achieved what they have, it then becomes trivial and meaningless to them, so they need their next fix of "I'm better than everybody else".  Effectively the community has devolved into an, "I'm not going to help you get even with me because then I'm not special" kind of community. "Hardcore" players are just the playground bullies, just in a different setting.

I'm playing a game to have fun and interact with others. I always try to help people out and hang out with new people. I don't care if some nub has my gear. He's still just a nub.

What happened to the days when people helped each other out? What happened to geared people taking along lesser geared people to teach them and help them get better?

Like I said, the REAL problem with today's gaming environment is not difficulty, but EGO.

I did,

I have a beautiful wife, a pretty decent kid :p, a sweet house out in the woods, a good job i've been at for almost 23 years now...

i'm doin ok   ; )

oh... ya mean....??

pfft.....

MMO's aren't "hard", that's merely a misnomer for "time consuming". Older games generally took more time to do something or to get something, and had heavier penalties for messing up. They were also less intuitive and tacticts weren't posted 10 minutes after a new boss was released, thus things took longer to nail down. But nailed down everything was eventually.

Want a hard game? I'm currently playing Victoria II as United States of Central America, vying for world domination. Now THAT is difficult :)

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by midmagic

Originally posted by Psychow

I've never understood why players who prefer to play casually instead of high end raid even need the epic gear.

Fore example in WoW:

If their playstyle is to grind rep, solo quests and do 5-man dungeons, why do they need super awesome epics? With blue quality max-level gear they can do everything they have chosen to participate in quite easily. Obtaining epic quality gear makes all their game play trivial and boring.

Yet WoW is handing out epics like there's no tomorrow and has essentially removed any sense of joy/accomplishment in obtaining those rewards now that everyone is "entitled" to get them.

The problem with WoW is that they screwed up the sense of character progression in WoTLK. Epics for rep grinders, solo questers, and 5 man runners is fine. They just "forgot" to add content to justify recieving epics and content to put the epics to use.

For example, first, grind green level dungeons to get blue gears. Next, grind blue level dungeons to get purple gears. Finally, purple level dungeons with some sort of leet appearance (or whatever) rewards for the sake of rewards. Green level dungeons rewarding purples was amazingly rediculous on top of having zero content to progress into once the green level dungeons were completed.

Having paths for all players to recieve top quality gear is fine as long as the effort to recieve the gear is justified. Except perhaps for solo players considering the difficulty in making content challenging for all classes in a game where characters have highly defined roles.

 

There is no problem. It is a problem if you think a purple item is good but no one knows the game think that way.

People look at ITEM LEVEL .. and if you get an hardmode item, there is a little green "heroic" under the name of the item.

And those *are* hard to get. Think of it this way:

L251 epic = green

L264 epic = blue

H model epic = purple. They just distinguish the three with different methods other than the color of the item.

This works for raiding ICC but is borked for earlier raids and all the endgame non-raid content.

ilevel 200 epics are great for running heroics and you really do not need much better to do that content properly.  Faction reward epics and ileevl 200 craftables are also really nice for that content.  ilevel 213-226 stuff is nice for Uldur and ilevel 32 stuff great for ToC.  However, once you get the emblem gear with is ilevel 232-245, it trivializes the non-raid content.  If one wants a challenge in 5man heroics ones either downgrades his/her gear or runs it with less geared alts.

Originally posted by Bandar83

The problem with MMO's nowadays is not the difficulty level. They are all pretty easy.

...

Like I said, the REAL problem with today's gaming environment is not difficulty, but EGO.

It sounds like you're the sort of person who can only keep one thing in his head at a time. You refer to "the problem with MMO's".

Have you ever considered the concept that there might be more than one problem?

Or have you considered that your problem with MMOs might not be exactly the same as someone else's problem. Or that other people are allowed to have different ideas and want different things than you do?

So just because you have a difficulty with ego, it doesn't follow in the slightest than someone else is not allowed to have a problem with difficulty?

Btw - IMO your issues with ego are a completely different issue. A lot of it's caused by the much more diverse demographic playing games nowadays. It's not just a bunch of essentially similar college geeks helping eachother out anymore. For better or worse, those days are gone, and society in MMOs tends to reflect society as a whole (with added problems caused by internet anonmity, and the presence of large numbers of young kids in some games).

Originally posted by Torik

ilevel 200 epics are great for running heroics and you really do not need much better to do that content properly.  Faction reward epics and ileevl 200 craftables are also really nice for that content.  ilevel 213-226 stuff is nice for Uldur and ilevel 32 stuff great for ToC.  However, once you get the emblem gear with is ilevel 232-245, it trivializes the non-raid content.  If one wants a challenge in 5man heroics ones either downgrades his/her gear or runs it with less geared alts.

Agreed. Anyone who wants a challenge in WoW PvE content is essentially confined to the latest raid instance. So nowadays, the only place they can find it is ICC. Even there, many of the normal mode bosses are pretty easy for any experienced raider (hence the large number of PuGs).

When the entire game shrinks to a single raid instance in pursuit of a challenge, then the game feels very small indeed.

Originally posted by Torik

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by midmagic

Originally posted by Psychow

I've never understood why players who prefer to play casually instead of high end raid even need the epic gear.

Fore example in WoW:

If their playstyle is to grind rep, solo quests and do 5-man dungeons, why do they need super awesome epics? With blue quality max-level gear they can do everything they have chosen to participate in quite easily. Obtaining epic quality gear makes all their game play trivial and boring.

Yet WoW is handing out epics like there's no tomorrow and has essentially removed any sense of joy/accomplishment in obtaining those rewards now that everyone is "entitled" to get them.

The problem with WoW is that they screwed up the sense of character progression in WoTLK. Epics for rep grinders, solo questers, and 5 man runners is fine. They just "forgot" to add content to justify recieving epics and content to put the epics to use.

For example, first, grind green level dungeons to get blue gears. Next, grind blue level dungeons to get purple gears. Finally, purple level dungeons with some sort of leet appearance (or whatever) rewards for the sake of rewards. Green level dungeons rewarding purples was amazingly rediculous on top of having zero content to progress into once the green level dungeons were completed.

Having paths for all players to recieve top quality gear is fine as long as the effort to recieve the gear is justified. Except perhaps for solo players considering the difficulty in making content challenging for all classes in a game where characters have highly defined roles.

 

There is no problem. It is a problem if you think a purple item is good but no one knows the game think that way.

People look at ITEM LEVEL .. and if you get an hardmode item, there is a little green "heroic" under the name of the item.

And those *are* hard to get. Think of it this way:

L251 epic = green

L264 epic = blue

H model epic = purple. They just distinguish the three with different methods other than the color of the item.

This works for raiding ICC but is borked for earlier raids and all the endgame non-raid content.

ilevel 200 epics are great for running heroics and you really do not need much better to do that content properly.  Faction reward epics and ileevl 200 craftables are also really nice for that content.  ilevel 213-226 stuff is nice for Uldur and ilevel 32 stuff great for ToC.  However, once you get the emblem gear with is ilevel 232-245, it trivializes the non-raid content.  If one wants a challenge in 5man heroics ones either downgrades his/her gear or runs it with less geared alts.

That is inevitable for a gear centric game. Old content will never be challenging since you can over-gear it.

But we were not talking about the ease of the content, but the "meaning" of epics. In fact, it is pretty clear that all epics BEFORE the latest tier is designed to be easy to get. There is no differentiation. A 226 item is more or less same difficulty to get as a 232 or 245 item. It only makes a different at 251 and up.

Originally posted by Antipathy

 

Originally posted by Torik

ilevel 200 epics are great for running heroics and you really do not need much better to do that content properly.  Faction reward epics and ileevl 200 craftables are also really nice for that content.  ilevel 213-226 stuff is nice for Uldur and ilevel 32 stuff great for ToC.  However, once you get the emblem gear with is ilevel 232-245, it trivializes the non-raid content.  If one wants a challenge in 5man heroics ones either downgrades his/her gear or runs it with less geared alts.

 

Agreed. Anyone who wants a challenge in WoW PvE content is essentially confined to the latest raid instance. So nowadays, the only place they can find it is ICC. Even there, many of the normal mode bosses are pretty easy for any experienced raider (hence the large number of PuGs).

When the entire game shrinks to a single raid instance in pursuit of a challenge, then the game feels very small indeed.

That is *if* your own goal is to have challenging PvE encounters. You can always go play PvP, or achievements, or leveling alts.

I don't think there is a way around that for a progression game. Progression = toons becoming more and more powerful = content becoming eaiser and easier when you progress.

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by Antipathy

 

Agreed. Anyone who wants a challenge in WoW PvE content is essentially confined to the latest raid instance. So nowadays, the only place they can find it is ICC. Even there, many of the normal mode bosses are pretty easy for any experienced raider (hence the large number of PuGs).

When the entire game shrinks to a single raid instance in pursuit of a challenge, then the game feels very small indeed.

That is *if* your own goal is to have challenging PvE encounters. You can always go play PvP, or achievements, or leveling alts.

I don't think there is a way around that for a progression game. Progression = toons becoming more and more powerful = content becoming eaiser and easier when you progress.

Even without progression things are easy.

Heroics were easy the minute people hit level 80 at the start of WotLK. They just became even easier as we geared up.

Originally posted by Lord.Bachus
In THE old day you had to work hard long time to get THE stuff you wanted in game. Nowerdays in modern day mmo it is much more instant gratification. Many people want to go back to THE old days, but why? I am working hard all day at work and thats no fun, in THE evening i want to have fun, and in my world hard work and labour are not fun. In real life i am an archeiver, but when playing my online adventures i love to be immersed intoo THE world. so THE only plagers that want it to be hard to aquire stuff in games are THE natural archeivers, which are only about 25% max probably even less people.

 Well I'm not working hard at work at all and I'd like to keep it that way. I like games to have difficulty and a chance to fail and long effort-involved tasks because...I hate them irl but in-game I can simply choose not to do them.