I don't understand the continued trend of time invested => advancement.

It has been that way for almost two decades; why can't we have puzzle oriented MMOs, or something that truly tests the abilities of the players? 

You don't necessarily need to have puzzles either to make something challenging. What if they took the challenging raid encounters found late game and put them in a less stat-demanding form at the beginning of the game?

I don't know about you, but I'm really tired of the KILL X/Y, GATHER I/J quests that are just timesinks and not challenges. You can still have RPG elements in a puzzle game i.e. advancement through improved ability instead of advancement through time invested.

You could try this one Myst Online

Originally posted by RefMinor
Because you would soon have advancement by looking it up on the Internet, the advantage of time served is that it cannot be skipped (unless your game offers a Cash shop but that is a different debate), you would need to have non repeating puzzles to make it work.

There's ways around that... make things random and placed random (with some kind of logic behind it).

But after being in a world first guild.. let me tell you they don't get world first because they are smart... they get world firsts because they shmooze and kiss ass to get access before other guilds.

What does that mean?  It means that the vast majority of the people playing mmos (even the hardcore) are dumb.

I'd love to see an "Opening of the Gates of AQ" scenario where the players, as a whole, have to figure out how to open some locale/instance/dungeon in some new MMO. ::cough rhymes with "stilled whores" cough::

Single player games like that were actually common in the 80s and 90s, Discworld was my favorite.

The problem is that wikis tend to make it hard nowadays, it isn't much of a challenge if most of the players copy their answers from wiki.

I  would need to have non repeating puzzles to make it work.

There are a few MMOs that can be intellectually challenging (or at least used to be). However, most of them tend not to do that well financially. Lets face it, the majority of people in this world aren't all that intelligent, and don't particularly enjoy games that are 'too hard'. One of the big advantages (and disadvantages) of an MMO is that it both needs and thrives on having a sizeable amount of players in game. You just can't do that if you make the majority of them feel inferior or left out.

I'm all for smarter games, it's one of the reasons I'm looking forward to GW2 amongst others, but I also understand why these games don't appear very often.

Originally posted by RefMinor
Because you would soon have advancement by looking it up on the Internet, the advantage of time served is that it cannot be skipped (unless your game offers a Cash shop but that is a different debate), you would need to have non repeating puzzles to make it work.

   There are plenty of puzzles that don't have simple algorithms. It's easy enough to generate a puzzle with random parameters so that every path and solution would not be the same for every player. 

  How about REAL AI that would learn from your moves? There are so many possibilities that haven't been explored/implemented, because people still fall for the old "invest enough time and you can be shiny too" advancement.

Testing skill and knowledge still falls under intellectual challenge; if you have to use certain skills dependent on the enemys move instead of a set rotation, or learn certain patterns, whether you can look them up, or not, it's still more challenging than spamming the same sequence of buttons over and over again..

I don't mind end-game raids so much, because they do require some learning and skill. What really peeves me is how you have to do repetitive things to advance, instead of improve your actual ability at the game.

There are plenty of people who hit max level, but have no idea how the game is actually to be played optimally (or even somewhat effectively). It's hard to blame them though when they had to do the same mindless task 1000 times to reach that point.

Originally posted by Loke666

Single player games like that were actually common in the 80s and 90s, Discworld was my favorite.

The problem is that wikis tend to make it hard nowadays, it isn't much of a challenge if most of the players copy their answers from wiki.

   Look at hard-mode raid encounters in WoW: A lot of people with sufficient gear aren't able to complete them due to insufficient ability, although they already know how the encounter will work, etc.

   Why can't those encounters be the centerpiece of the game? What if every mob required you to learn its abilities and adapted?

  Things that are tedious are boring.

SWTOR had one puzzle in one of the planets where there were electric poles connected to each other and a machine on each pole.  each time you pressed one, it would turn on/off all the ones connected to it (except for 2 of the poles which ignored one specific pole it was connected to) .  you had to turn on all the poles to power a canon and shoot down a ship o.o It was flat out awesome.

There were 2 groups that werent able to do it and skipped it.  I was able to solve it after a bit of testing.  Ofc the rest of the time I Was there, people were always like "WTF THIS IS BUGGED!!!" -.-  So I think mainstream mmos cant be intellectually challenging unless they know its going to be puzzle oriented and ease them into different puzzle mechanics (Im assuming theyve never touched puzzle games) o.o

More of those kinds of puzzles would be awesome but if something as simple as that makes most of the players just skip it...yknoe..its kinda hopeless.

MMOPRPG would be awesome though...

Originally posted by //\\//\\oo

I don't understand the continued trend of time invested => advancement.

It has been that way for almost two decades; why can't we have puzzle oriented MMOs, or something that truly tests the abilities of the players? 

 

You don't necessarily need to have puzzles either to make something challenging. What if they took the challenging raid encounters found late game and put them in a less stat-demanding form at the beginning of the game?

 

I don't know about you, but I'm really tired of the KILL X/Y, GATHER I/J quests that are just timesinks and not challenges. You can still have RPG elements in a puzzle game i.e. advancement through improved ability instead of advancement through time invested.

 

 

Suppose you could make a intellectually challenging game such that only 1 in 10,000 players could do well playing and the tens of millions of dollars in upfront dev costs to make your brainy game.  Now, for the sake of discussion, say you have a market of 10,000,000 mmorpg players.  What that would mean is that you are spending tens of millions of dollars to get 1,000 players who would do well at playing the game, assuming you could get them to come to your game in the first place.  It's a poor ROI.

Originally posted by waynejr2

Originally posted by //\\//\\oo

I don't understand the continued trend of time invested => advancement.

It has been that way for almost two decades; why can't we have puzzle oriented MMOs, or something that truly tests the abilities of the players? 

 

You don't necessarily need to have puzzles either to make something challenging. What if they took the challenging raid encounters found late game and put them in a less stat-demanding form at the beginning of the game?

 

I don't know about you, but I'm really tired of the KILL X/Y, GATHER I/J quests that are just timesinks and not challenges. You can still have RPG elements in a puzzle game i.e. advancement through improved ability instead of advancement through time invested.

 

 

Suppose you could make a intellectually challenging game such that only 1 in 10,000 players could do well playing and the tens of millions of dollars in upfront dev costs to make your brainy game.  Now, for the sake of discussion, say you have a market of 10,000,000 mmorpg players.  What that would mean is that you are spending tens of millions of dollars to get 1,000 players who would do well at playing the game, assuming you could get them to come to your game in the first place.  It's a poor ROI.

  Not if you give players the option to choose, or if you implement things trivially and allow the existence of a wiki (which is essentially a choice).

How about this as an idea: You can do something trivial n times to advance (for people who don't want to be as intellectually challenged), or solve something non-trivial as a quicker means of advancement granted you're capable enough?

Originally posted by Castillle

SWTOR had one puzzle in one of the planets where there were electric poles connected to each other and a machine on each pole.  each time you pressed one, it would turn on/off all the ones connected to it (except for 2 of the poles which ignored one specific pole it was connected to) .  you had to turn on all the poles to power a canon and shoot down a ship o.o It was flat out awesome.

There were 2 groups that werent able to do it and skipped it.  I was able to solve it after a bit of testing.  Ofc the rest of the time I Was there, people were always like "WTF THIS IS BUGGED!!!" -.-  So I think mainstream mmos cant be intellectually challenging unless they know its going to be puzzle oriented and ease them into different puzzle mechanics (Im assuming theyve never touched puzzle games) o.o

More of those kinds of puzzles would be awesome but if something as simple as that makes most of the players just skip it...yknoe..its kinda hopeless.

MMOPRPG would be awesome though...

 

TSW will be interesting regarding this, since there'll be a hell of a lot of puzzles in the various missions. The guy who's the game director for The Secret World, Ragnar Tornquist, is the same guy responsible for puzzle adventure games Dreamfall and The Longest Journey.

Why Can't MMOs Be Intellectually Challenging?

Because most mmo players are already intellectually challenged.

Don't bring calculus into a kindergarten class.

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Originally posted by eyeswideopen

Why Can't MMOs Be Intellectually Challenging?
Because most mmo players are already intellectually challenged.
Don't bring calculus into a kindergarten class.
 

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That's kinda funny. LOL

In general, it takes a lot longer for a developer to create a good puzzle than it takes a community to tear it apart and solve it. 

"Why Can't MMOs Be Intellectually Challenging?"

Simple... Because most of humanity isn't intellectually gifted.

TTS will have some boss puzzles. Some puzzles might take months to complete, obviously not actual total time, but the time period. Puzzles will do things like unlock hidden cities with hoards of magical knowledge, this is one of the month long type ones, unleash free roam bosses on accident :), unlock fast travel between specific points and do various other things.

Also players can design their own puzzles for various reasons.

Puzzles might involve math, science, or historical knowledge in a general sense, ie knowledge of earth history puzzle types things will be clues, also teamwork and crafting and maybe magic. Puzzles will be one off activities because TTS is a virtual world and there are no phases, instances, or static resetting or spawning areas. There will even be some platformer style reflex puzzles.

The whole world is essentially a puzzle as well. For instance climbing a mountain to create a rope climbing path or building a monkey bridge or something will allow travel between points to be sped up. And so forth.

I really really don't care if having awesome puzzles puts off the faux gamer masses. Or if some people cannot complete them due to intellectual limits. And in the case of reflex puzzles, reflex limits.

Originally posted by FuryV

"Why Can't MMOs Be Intellectually Challenging?"

 Simple... Because most of humanity isn't intellectually gifted.

True...but the vast majority consider themselves more gifted than the other guys.  A statistically suspect, but firmly held belief.

I suspect that the true answer lies on the development side--puzzles (for example) are not terribly popular with gamers, and "good" ai (creature logic) is far less easy to design than most players believe it to be...and less useful than assumed.