So what the OP is really saying is that MMORPG's should surprise us sometimes.

I agree, the trend of late has been to remove all the surprise, your character's progression is a carefully calculated path that you follow from A to B to C, and rare is the moment when you find yourself outmatched. (I  have noticed in some games people are able to brag about how many levels they reached without ever dying, and they even reward them with titles.

Now, while some (well one)  posters in this thread seem to love to misguidely slam EVE, the fact is even the most boring PVE activities can suddenly turn into some real excitement, frequently because you miscalculate something or another player comes along to spoil your peaceful day.  Ask any miner who's been suicide ganked in hi sec how safe and easy it is and whether or not they can just fall asleep at the keyboard.  Go out and run some level 5 missions, Level 10 Complexes or kill sleepers in a level 6 wormhole and watch your 3.5 billion ISK Carrier go boom and tell me there isn't any real excitement in EVE PVE.

I'm thinking back to DAOC in the early days, and even though it was a level based game there were places where it would decide to suprise you with mobs that would BAF unexpectedly, or when pulling a partial camp for some reason the entire camp would come at you and wipe your group to the last man.  (We used to have great laughs when our Guild lead/primary puller would do this, and of course layed all the blame on him)

Also, they'd send you out on quests into the frontiers, where you might encounter other high level players who would smack your lowbie arse down, or even run into monsters much higher than yourself that had no problem chasing you to the zone line.

I don't mind losing on occasion, I recall Vanguard sort of took it the wrong way when you'd run into a wall of npc's you couldn't get past w/o a group, prefer being able to navigate my way through even a dangerous higer level land, w/o pulling aggro from ever monster within 10000 meters.

So bring back the surprises I say!

Originally posted by Loktofeit

Still not following what that has to do with the topic, but that could just be because it's late here. Is it that you agree that the evil (downside, negative, con, etc)  of having every battle a fair fight is that it steals away the feeling of progression or you disagree?

Having every battle act like that robs the feeling of progression, yes.

However you only need the tiniest fraction of battles to be unfair to have the feeling of progression.  For most players, one single trip back to demolish that low-level Bandit who used to give them trouble is enough.  They now understand they've progressed, and wish to continue having 99% of their battles be interesting (fair.)

So calling fair fights "evil" is completely wrong, because players want fair fights the overwhelming majority of the time.  Too-easy fights are boredom and too-hard fights are frustration.   A game which bores or frustrates on a regular basis isn't going to be very popular (players want a game that entertains on a regular basis, and that means fair fights where decisions feel meaningful.)

It's fine to let a masochistic player repeatedly engage these boring and frustrating fights, but the game should allow normal players to almost entirely avoid them.  Most players aren't interested in boredom or tedium, and should only encounter them in very controlled amounts (very rarely it's okay to fight something that's outright too difficult, and a little more frequently it's okay to fight something that pushes the player back a few steps and forces them to rework their strategy; and on the too-easy side of the fence it's just a matter of leaving areas alone and if the player wants to come back to them and obliterate that low Bandit, they can, but it's optional.)

Originally posted by moosecatlol

As long as these "Terrifying monsters" are able to present fear in a skillful manner, rather than the cliché statistical fashion that is over represented in today's games.

 

I still vote that levels and gear need to get the **** out.

Also something very interesting I've noticed about games that allow gear to scale to an absurd level, is that players who were at one point considered "skillful" players, tend to play like $#!^ as the gear gets better and better. It's not just action rpgs that have dodge functions to avoid damage frames, its all games, as the players stats get better the less the effort the player has to put forth.

 

I'm all for progression that is lead by difficulty of content, so long as that difficulty isn't determined by the number of  "+'s" required on your gear.

Imagine a game that didn't have levels, and didn't hold the players hand through the content. Imagine what it would be like trying to determine which mobs you can handle and which mobs would end up being total bad-***es. Actually that kind of reminds of how I ended up having to play Cry of Fear.

You're throwing out the baby with the bath water.  You may not like their current implementation but that doesn't mean we should get rid of them completely.  Without them, I wouldn't reconize the RPG genre.

Great post/thread OP.

Some MMOs are still trying with Elite mobs or Heroic areas/quests and such, or low level world bosses.

One of the things TOR got right, IMO was having the Heroic areas/quests and low level world bosses.

Encourages grouping for one, also gives that sense of danger and exploration.

Motivation to gather friends and/or come back later.

There were a few times in TOR while leveling up I'd come across a random elite mob and try to solo it, getting my ass handed to me. Then I'd usually try again, using different tactics and blowing cooldowns etc.

World design in TOR kind of killed it though as everything was so gated/tunneled you never really had the motivation to go "off the beaten path" because it became a frustrating lesson in invisible walls and unclimbable barriers.

Originally posted by Creslin321

One thing that I think is way different (in a bad way) when you compare the MMORPGS and RPGs of today to their counterparts of 90's is this concept that everything should be "fair."  In themepark MMORPGs, you are guided from quest to quest in a way that ensures the mobs you fight will always be around your level, so you always have a "fair" (typically easy) fight.  The same is true of modern SPRPGs, though they sometimes use devices like level-scaling to enforce this fairness as opposed to simply guiding the player.

.....snipped for length......

So in conclusion, I really think (MMO)RPGs should get back to showing the player the terrifying monsters of the world at a lower level, and not being afraid to let them stumble on a dragon's lair just to put everything in perspective.  I'm not advocating the use of "grief NPCs" like Everquest had, but I think it would be good to even have a few "non-aggro" NPCs of higher levels wandering around lower level places so that players could have something to strive for.

I definitely agree with the fair fight issue, but I don't think it is solely due to game design based on level scaling.   It has much more to do with solo play.  If any mob can be solo'd it can't be challenging.     

Originally posted by Axehilt

Originally posted by Loktofeit

Still not following what that has to do with the topic, but that could just be because it's late here. Is it that you agree that the evil (downside, negative, con, etc)  of having every battle a fair fight is that it steals away the feeling of progression or you disagree?

Having every battle act like that robs the feeling of progression, yes.

However you only need the tiniest fraction of battles to be unfair to have the feeling of progression.  For most players, one single trip back to demolish that low-level Bandit who used to give them trouble is enough.  They now understand they've progressed, and wish to continue having 99% of their battles be interesting (fair.)

So calling fair fights "evil" is completely wrong, because players want fair fights the overwhelming majority of the time.  Too-easy fights are boredom and too-hard fights are frustration.   A game which bores or frustrates on a regular basis isn't going to be very popular (players want a game that entertains on a regular basis, and that means fair fights where decisions feel meaningful.)

It's fine to let a masochistic player repeatedly engage these boring and frustrating fights, but the game should allow normal players to almost entirely avoid them.  Most players aren't interested in boredom or tedium, and should only encounter them in very controlled amounts (very rarely it's okay to fight something that's outright too difficult, and a little more frequently it's okay to fight something that pushes the player back a few steps and forces them to rework their strategy; and on the too-easy side of the fence it's just a matter of leaving areas alone and if the player wants to come back to them and obliterate that low Bandit, they can, but it's optional.)

 

Are you serious? Do you know how popular diablo is? How much of that game is about each fight being challenging and how much is about just mowing through armies of monsters like its nothing and farming hell level bosses thousands of times? I played a bit of WoW and most people just plowed through creeps at a lower level than them.

I would say that the majority of players DON'T want fair fights. Otherwise they would play games that are much more effective at it than RPGs.

Originally posted by Cuathon

Are you serious? Do you know how popular diablo is? How much of that game is about each fight being challenging and how much is about just mowing through armies of monsters like its nothing and farming hell level bosses thousands of times? I played a bit of WoW and most people just plowed through creeps at a lower level than them.

I would say that the majority of players DON'T want fair fights. Otherwise they would play games that are much more effective at it than RPGs.

You are absolutely right. It is NOT about a fair fight. It is about the exercise of power, and feel good by progressing. In PvE games, people may want a *small* (emphasis on small) chance of failure to have the illusion of danger. However, if you make it too big (like in the early Catalysm H dungeons .. you can fail significantly .. like 1/3 .. if you are in green/blue gear and you have to know the fight), people are unhappy and complain.

However, there are *some* who want fair fights. Those who do play rated BGs and Arenas .. or other competitive games.

Originally posted by Cuathon

Originally posted by Axehilt

Originally posted by Loktofeit

...?

Having every battle act like that robs the feeling of progression, yes.

However you only need the tiniest fraction of battles to be unfair to have the feeling of progression.  For most players, one single trip back to demolish that low-level Bandit who used to give them trouble is enough.  They now understand they've progressed, and wish to continue having 99% of their battles be interesting (fair.)

So calling fair fights "evil" is completely wrong, because players want fair fights the overwhelming majority of the time.  Too-easy fights are boredom and too-hard fights are frustration.   A game which bores or frustrates on a regular basis isn't going to be very popular (players want a game that entertains on a regular basis, and that means fair fights where decisions feel meaningful.)

It's fine to let a masochistic player repeatedly engage these boring and frustrating fights, but the game should allow normal players to almost entirely avoid them.  Most players aren't interested in boredom or tedium, and should only encounter them in very controlled amounts (very rarely it's okay to fight something that's outright too difficult, and a little more frequently it's okay to fight something that pushes the player back a few steps and forces them to rework their strategy; and on the too-easy side of the fence it's just a matter of leaving areas alone and if the player wants to come back to them and obliterate that low Bandit, they can, but it's optional.)

 

Are you serious? Do you know how popular diablo is? How much of that game is about each fight being challenging and how much is about just mowing through armies of monsters like its nothing and farming hell level bosses thousands of times? I played a bit of WoW and most people just plowed through creeps at a lower level than them.

I would say that the majority of players DON'T want fair fights. Otherwise they would play games that are much more effective at it than RPGs.

Pretty much, yeah.

Here's the thing...

I LOVE some games that offer "fair fights."  Fighting games (SF/MK), RTS games (SC2), TBS games (Civ/EU3), and even PvP in some MMO's!

All these games offer "fair fights" and I enjoy it immensely.  My problem is not with fair fights in general.  My problem is with the incongruence found between trying to always offer a fair fight, and trying to give players a real sense of progression.

If I'm playing an RPG where I start off as a peasant struggling to kill goblins and will eventually evolve to a powerful wizard that can challenge the gods, then I seriously don't want the game to ensure that every fight I entire is "balanced."  It just kills that sense of progression because everything is RELATIVE.  Even though I am getting more powerful, the mobs are made more powerful at the same rate to compensate.  So the result is that it feels I am stagnating at the same level of "power."

This is made even worse by the fact that many of these games try to make you feel "powerful" from day 1.  The result is that you get crazy scenarios where you are fighting a gigantic earth elemental at level 1, and then fighting "blue" goblins instead of "red" goblins at level 45.  So this means that you really don't feel any more powerful at all..the games do such a good job at making you feel powerful at level 1, that you essentially reach the endpoint of your "perceived" power at level 1.

Originally posted by Creslin321

Originally posted by Cuathon

Originally posted by Axehilt

Originally posted by Loktofeit

...?

Having every battle act like that robs the feeling of progression, yes.

However you only need the tiniest fraction of battles to be unfair to have the feeling of progression.  For most players, one single trip back to demolish that low-level Bandit who used to give them trouble is enough.  They now understand they've progressed, and wish to continue having 99% of their battles be interesting (fair.)

So calling fair fights "evil" is completely wrong, because players want fair fights the overwhelming majority of the time.  Too-easy fights are boredom and too-hard fights are frustration.   A game which bores or frustrates on a regular basis isn't going to be very popular (players want a game that entertains on a regular basis, and that means fair fights where decisions feel meaningful.)

It's fine to let a masochistic player repeatedly engage these boring and frustrating fights, but the game should allow normal players to almost entirely avoid them.  Most players aren't interested in boredom or tedium, and should only encounter them in very controlled amounts (very rarely it's okay to fight something that's outright too difficult, and a little more frequently it's okay to fight something that pushes the player back a few steps and forces them to rework their strategy; and on the too-easy side of the fence it's just a matter of leaving areas alone and if the player wants to come back to them and obliterate that low Bandit, they can, but it's optional.)

 

Are you serious? Do you know how popular diablo is? How much of that game is about each fight being challenging and how much is about just mowing through armies of monsters like its nothing and farming hell level bosses thousands of times? I played a bit of WoW and most people just plowed through creeps at a lower level than them.

I would say that the majority of players DON'T want fair fights. Otherwise they would play games that are much more effective at it than RPGs.

Pretty much, yeah.

Here's the thing...

I LOVE some games that offer "fair fights."  Fighting games (SF/MK), RTS games (SC2), TBS games (Civ/EU3), and even PvP in some MMO's!

All these games offer "fair fights" and I enjoy it immensely.  My problem is not with fair fights in general.  My problem is with the incongruence found between trying to always offer a fair fight, and trying to give players a real sense of progression.

If I'm playing an RPG where I start off as a peasant struggling to kill goblins and will eventually evolve to a powerful wizard that can challenge the gods, then I seriously don't want the game to ensure that every fight I entire is "balanced."  It just kills that sense of progression because everything is RELATIVE.  Even though I am getting more powerful, the mobs are made more powerful at the same rate to compensate.  So the result is that it feels I am stagnating at the same level of "power."

This is made even worse by the fact that many of these games try to make you feel "powerful" from day 1.  The result is that you get crazy scenarios where you are fighting a gigantic earth elemental at level 1, and then fighting "blue" goblins instead of "red" goblins at level 45.  So this means that you really don't feel any more powerful at all..the games do such a good job at making you feel powerful at level 1, that you essentially reach the endpoint of your "perceived" power at level 1.

 

Yes I agree.

Originally posted by Cuathon

Are you serious? Do you know how popular diablo is? How much of that game is about each fight being challenging and how much is about just mowing through armies of monsters like its nothing and farming hell level bosses thousands of times? I played a bit of WoW and most people just plowed through creeps at a lower level than them.

I would say that the majority of players DON'T want fair fights. Otherwise they would play games that are much more effective at it than RPGs.

So when you played Diablo there was never a threat of dying at all, ever?  Beating multiple mobs doesn't mean you never come under risk of death, and the game shines brightest when you're nearly overcome by mobs and are required to use tactics and effective ability use to overcome challenges.

I mean one of the shortcomings of both Diablo and WOW is how both games make it really hard to find a rewarding challenge.  Diablo 2 forces you to play through the boring difficulty mode first, and WOW rewards you for fighting -2 level mobs at a higher rate than +4 level mobs.

Clearly CoH is the superior model, as the harder mobs you fight the faster your progression, and that's obviously the "Challenge vs. Reward" ideal that games should aspire to.

All it would take is letting you choose the difficulty in Diablo, and changing the XP reward structure in WOW.

Originally posted by Axehilt

Originally posted by Cuathon

Are you serious? Do you know how popular diablo is? How much of that game is about each fight being challenging and how much is about just mowing through armies of monsters like its nothing and farming hell level bosses thousands of times? I played a bit of WoW and most people just plowed through creeps at a lower level than them.

I would say that the majority of players DON'T want fair fights. Otherwise they would play games that are much more effective at it than RPGs.

So when you played Diablo there was never a threat of dying at all, ever?  Beating multiple mobs doesn't mean you never come under risk of death, and the game shines brightest when you're nearly overcome by mobs and are required to use tactics and effective ability use to overcome challenges.

I mean one of the shortcomings of both Diablo and WOW is how both games make it really hard to find a rewarding challenge.  Diablo 2 forces you to play through the boring difficulty mode first, and WOW rewards you for fighting -2 level mobs at a higher rate than +4 level mobs.

Clearly CoH is the superior model, as the harder mobs you fight the faster your progression, and that's obviously the "Challenge vs. Reward" ideal that games should aspire to.

All it would take is letting you choose the difficulty in Diablo, and changing the XP reward structure in WOW.

I almost never died in Diablo. I played a necro. I played some other classes also.

Originally posted by Creslin321

All these games offer "fair fights" and I enjoy it immensely.  My problem is not with fair fights in general.  My problem is with the incongruence found between trying to always offer a fair fight, and trying to give players a real sense of progression.

If I'm playing an RPG where I start off as a peasant struggling to kill goblins and will eventually evolve to a powerful wizard that can challenge the gods, then I seriously don't want the game to ensure that every fight I entire is "balanced."  It just kills that sense of progression because everything is RELATIVE.  Even though I am getting more powerful, the mobs are made more powerful at the same rate to compensate.  So the result is that it feels I am stagnating at the same level of "power."

This is made even worse by the fact that many of these games try to make you feel "powerful" from day 1.  The result is that you get crazy scenarios where you are fighting a gigantic earth elemental at level 1, and then fighting "blue" goblins instead of "red" goblins at level 45.  So this means that you really don't feel any more powerful at all..the games do such a good job at making you feel powerful at level 1, that you essentially reach the endpoint of your "perceived" power at level 1.

 

As I said, that should still exist (and nearly always does.)  But the RPGs played most are games like Fallout 3, Skyrim, Mass Effect 3, and Deus Ex, which nearly all let you go back to an easy level to see how far you've come but where 98% of your fights are fair because fair fights are more interesting.

Feeling powerful from Day 1 isn't an issue.  My CoH characters beat down multiple villains at level 1, yet I was still clearly weaker than level 30 mobs, and when I was level 30 I could one shot entire level 1 villain packs.

Stagnation with variation is the name of the game.  Everyone would quit if at level 30 the level 30 mobs were much easier than the level 1 mobs at level 1.  Why play if the game gets boringly easy at higher levels?  You need some variation in there to motivate players, but that's just wiggle room within an overall stagnation.

If a player's moment-to-moment gameplay ever receeds back to a point where all fights are easy, the player quits out of boredom.  In fact that's exactly what happened in Champions Online for me, where most of my characters became enormously powerful at level ~14, and for the next 10+ levels all the mobs were super easy.  It made the moment-to-moment gameplay entirely dull.

Originally posted by Axehilt

Originally posted by Creslin321

All these games offer "fair fights" and I enjoy it immensely.  My problem is not with fair fights in general.  My problem is with the incongruence found between trying to always offer a fair fight, and trying to give players a real sense of progression.

If I'm playing an RPG where I start off as a peasant struggling to kill goblins and will eventually evolve to a powerful wizard that can challenge the gods, then I seriously don't want the game to ensure that every fight I entire is "balanced."  It just kills that sense of progression because everything is RELATIVE.  Even though I am getting more powerful, the mobs are made more powerful at the same rate to compensate.  So the result is that it feels I am stagnating at the same level of "power."

This is made even worse by the fact that many of these games try to make you feel "powerful" from day 1.  The result is that you get crazy scenarios where you are fighting a gigantic earth elemental at level 1, and then fighting "blue" goblins instead of "red" goblins at level 45.  So this means that you really don't feel any more powerful at all..the games do such a good job at making you feel powerful at level 1, that you essentially reach the endpoint of your "perceived" power at level 1.

 

As I said, that should still exist (and nearly always does.)  But the RPGs played most are games like Fallout 3, Skyrim, Mass Effect 3, and Deus Ex, which nearly all let you go back to an easy level to see how far you've come but where 98% of your fights are fair because fair fights are more interesting.

Feeling powerful from Day 1 isn't an issue.  My CoH characters beat down multiple villains at level 1, yet I was still clearly weaker than level 30 mobs, and when I was level 30 I could one shot entire level 1 villain packs.

Stagnation with variation is the name of the game.  Everyone would quit if at level 30 the level 30 mobs were much easier than the level 1 mobs at level 1.  Why play if the game gets boringly easy at higher levels?  You need some variation in there to motivate players, but that's just wiggle room within an overall stagnation.

If a player's moment-to-moment gameplay ever receeds back to a point where all fights are easy, the player quits out of boredom.  In fact that's exactly what happened in Champions Online for me, where most of my characters became enormously powerful at level ~14, and for the next 10+ levels all the mobs were super easy.  It made the moment-to-moment gameplay entirely dull.

Note that MMO mobs are the same for everyone. So for some of us, the mobs are ALREADY boringly easy.

Originally posted by Cuathon

I almost never died in Diablo. I played a necro. I played some other classes also.

But on harder difficulties you did die.  If you never came under a threat of damage or death or failure ever, the game would've been incredibly boring.

You can certainly play a lot of games with a very defensive strategy where your build and playstyle cause you to advance very slowly but relatively risk-free, but that's a player choice not a game design (and game design should only allow so much of that.)

Originally posted by Axehilt

Originally posted by Cuathon

I almost never died in Diablo. I played a necro. I played some other classes also.

But on harder difficulties you did die.  If you never came under a threat of damage or death or failure ever, the game would've been incredibly boring.

You can certainly play a lot of games with a very defensive strategy where your build and playstyle cause you to advance very slowly but relatively risk-free, but that's a player choice not a game design (and game design should only allow so much of that.)

I did die. But not very often. And it had nothing to do with being unnecessarily safe.

Originally posted by Cuathon

Note that MMO mobs are the same for everyone. So for some of us, the mobs are ALREADY boringly easy.

Because the game encourages you to fight the easy mobs.

Did you even read the part about CoH?  Fighting harder mobs results in faster progression.  That's the ideal, clearly.

/eating popcorn excitedly!

Originally posted by thinktank001

Originally posted by Creslin321

One thing that I think is way different (in a bad way) when you compare the MMORPGS and RPGs of today to their counterparts of 90's is this concept that everything should be "fair."  In themepark MMORPGs, you are guided from quest to quest in a way that ensures the mobs you fight will always be around your level, so you always have a "fair" (typically easy) fight.  The same is true of modern SPRPGs, though they sometimes use devices like level-scaling to enforce this fairness as opposed to simply guiding the player.

.....snipped for length......

So in conclusion, I really think (MMO)RPGs should get back to showing the player the terrifying monsters of the world at a lower level, and not being afraid to let them stumble on a dragon's lair just to put everything in perspective.  I'm not advocating the use of "grief NPCs" like Everquest had, but I think it would be good to even have a few "non-aggro" NPCs of higher levels wandering around lower level places so that players could have something to strive for.

 

I definitely agree with the fair fight issue, but I don't think it is solely due to game design based on level scaling.   It has much more to do with solo play.  If any mob can be solo'd it can't be challenging.     

 I have to disagree that just since a mob or anything can be soloed that it cann't be challenging. There are so many ways of making things challenging that range from merely using statistical differeinces in power (ie levels, or elite status), making the mob require different tactics then is normally used (like making a mob excessively hard hitting yet with a slow movement or attack speed, and so making using kiting, or other such effects to mitigate that effect.), as welll as other such things. It is more that the style of combat is humdrum with no real change in how you tackle things (most melee always use the relative same tactics, ranged as well, and so on.), yet if you add things such as dfferent tactics that a mobs uses, effects they have, or other such thigns that do not rely so heavily on statistical imbalances to create challenge (ie levels and such.) ten you can create challenging solo game play. I remeber in many games both mmos as well as rpgs where i had to very challenging solo experinces (like in castlevania a single player game, or even in many of the epic quests of games that were either class based or able to be done solo, but yet could be done with a group to make them easier for you.). Easy play weither it is solo or group oriented helps in progression in tthat you can progress much faster then if you tried more challenging content, that is where i think the issue of unchallenging content is arise froom the desire to progress at a faster pace (such as to catch up with friends, guildmates, or get to other content such as end-game since the content prior to this desired content is seen as a obsticale.). To me solo content should be less challenging on average compared to group content, yet this does not mean that some solo content should not be more difficult/challenging then some of the group content mind you, but that does not mean that solo content is not challenging or can not be challenging mind you. Even in games like D&D, WOD, or such table top rpgs you can create challenging content that is solo or group based, it is just that you need to create it to be challenging for what it is supposed to before, even in consoles a solo game as well as co-op games could both be jsut as challenging as each other with one being more so at points.

Fair fights are really important.. in PvP.

PvE wise things are different, I liked the old thing that you sometimes had to run in a zone of the right level.

And frankly is it not a fair fight now either, the mobs usually have no chanse unless you pull far too many. A fair fight would really be when one mobhave about the same chanse of winning as you have. That is actually more hardcore than any early game I seen.

Nah, todays open zones are not about a fair fight but massacring mobs in huge numbers fast. You are supposed to feel "heroic" that way.

Originally posted by Cuathon
Note that MMO mobs are the same for everyone. So for some of us, the mobs are ALREADY boringly easy.

 This is not completely true actually in that everyone of the same level of a class will have the same easy mobs with realitively slight diffeerences, but players of lower or higher levels as well as of difference classes will see differince in diffulty compared to others playing. Such ass a level 10 fighting a lelvel 15 mobs compared to a level 15 fighting the same mob, or a warrior fighting a mob by a mage character fighting the general mob. Even at max level with similar gear clases will not be the exact same with some having higher or lower output, others having better utility, or survival abilities then others.