Slycne said:
The problem becomes that MMOs are inherently not single player games and can not be designed as such.
Ninja Gaiden, for example, can be designed to be very difficult from the ground up because the developer knows more or less exactly what the player will have access to at each point. So the games challenge can mostly come from the difficultly in learning the games patterns and executing the right moves with precise time. Their is no sense of risk in this kind of gameplay though, if you die at worst you reload an earlier save, but on the same token the game isn't trying to encourage player agency.
An MMO can not be so certain, so thus must rely more heavily on punishment for challenge.
Can't they though? Look at a game like GTA, where you pick your own quests where and when you want it, with your progression mostly locked down to a few "story-driving" quests. Isn't this pretty much what MMOs do?
The real limitation isn't one of design but, from what I gather, a technical side. Having 200 or 500 players running around a huge open environment full of NPCs and a "real" combat system (even if we're talking hitscan and not the more complex ballistics systems) will make a server cry.
So you limit the gameplay to the good'ol "pseudo-real time/turn based", which is basically trading blows. Which isn't very challenging...
Slycne said:
The level 20 ogre that you need to defeat for this quest might provide a challenge for a level 20 player, in that they have similar dps and health, but much less so if the player is say level 30 or grouped with a friend or only level 15 but plans to sneak passed and steal the item needed. This state of flux, along with technological limitations, means that the ogre can't primary offer challenge through a single player method.
Isn't this primarily aggravated by a punishing death penalty? I mean, if you have a lax death, people might be tempted to experiment with bigger foes. I'm thinking single player RPGs where you can save anytime, I'm far more tempted to take that big boss earlier, when it's more challenging, than in say, runescape, where dying could cause me to lose pieces of equipment. In the later everyone would simply grind out the levels, gear and equipment needed to make it a walk in the park, essentially negating ANY kind of challenge one could potentially find at any point.
Slycne said:
This is also coupled with the fact that MMOs, more so than most genres, grew directly out of tabletop gaming - where the primary purpose was to player to submit their own agency against the world. The freedom to make choices, implement those choices and reap the benefits/repercussions of it. And then there is also my previous point of how death mechanics are used to keep the world economy from inflating by providing hefty money sinks.
In the end it's different mechanics for different games and designers understand how those mechanics shape the world. For me the mechanics of true risk when paired with player agency make for far more interesting settings, hence my continued love for tabletop games. The universe of Eve Online intrigues me more as a whole more than WoW. This is in part why we constantly have news about the goings on in Eve and far less so about what latest boss has been killed in Azeroth.
But MMOs aren't particularly effective in that point. The only case I know of where players have a REAL impact in the world is in EvE. For all the many, many things it does wrong, EvE can claim one thing very, very right: It creates an actual, living, symbiotic, player-run universe. Nowhere else do you find players basically running the world, and trade federations and whatever. Off course the gameplay is still horrid so I won't touch it with a 50 ft pole, but it does create a universe where player's actions matter better than any other MMO I've ever seen.
But I've seen single player games do this as well. Mount & Blade: Warband is a good example. Alpha Protocol seems particularly good at this from what I hear.
Also there are other ways to administer money sinks or "protect" the economy. Repair or reload fees for instances can act as money sinks. Having extremely desirable items/services tied to hefty price tags. Or you can simply provide places to buy all the gear you need in the actual game at store set prices. If you fix prices, people have no option but to be limited to them. Why would I buy that golden armor for a billion off that player if there's a store over there selling it for 3000? I'm not saying these are good or bad, I'm saying these are options.
And death is hardly a good money sink isn't it? I mean, most players are smart enough to avoid death, either by beating the challenge or avoiding it till they can beat it. Which leads us to either making extremely and absurdly punishing deaths, or having death be more of a frustration than a relevant market balancing mechanic.
Slycne said:
It's a mechanic, but to me it's a cheap mechanic that I rather avoid. Anything that has any chance of failure can be brutal by simply inflating the death penalty. Make it delete your account and your membership, and suddenly that starter "go kill 10 spiders" quest seems very fucking hardcore.
I can deal in extremes too.
"Please Enter Your Account and Password"
"Congratulations, you've won! Here is your max level character, gear, trinkets, crafting materials, etc."
Between the two I'd rather play your game. That said, my point is that raising death penalty is just a way to make anything, no matter what, into faux challenge.
