Showing Posts For Redfrost.3261:
Games are about fun. It’s design 101. Frustrating is not fun. These dungeons are not fun. I hear alot of me and my guild, which predicates experience with experienced players. But the new people to the game (be it an MMO veteran or new to the genre) want to get the experience too without the level of commitment of being in the right guild or right groups of people. The need to play hours and hours to understand the mechanics when they shouldn’t have to be masters of tactics of their characters until at least endgame content. And even at end game shouldn’t those who wish to be more casual have a right (or expect a right) to enjoy all the content they purchased?
Your dungeons right now are built for hardcore players. That’s fine if they are your audience. I don’t know of an MMO that has been very successful catering to the hardcore. They are vocal, supportive and demanding on the other player base to love everything they love. That’s fine if the fiscal base they bring is the audience you want.
It seems though that successful MMO’s balance the need to give carrots to the hardcore on occassion without alienating the casual players who generate the real revenue engine. And the things that bring more casual players is fun. Fun is not dying endlessly where every advantage they try is already blocked and beaten. It basically decries a game designer who wishes to show how smart they are and how inferior those who fail are. This type of game design is not fun and has a long line of failures in MMO’s to date.
Challenging is not limiting the level of a player so they can’t get a natural advantage and then OP the Mobs to ridiculous proportions. That satisfies hardcore players and those on the other end typically walk away with a bad taste in their mouth.
My suggestion is to make the dungeons workable to PUGs. If you make levels of difficulty that’s fine, but one problem with that is then dividing your player base into camps who alienate others for lack of experience, play style and other attributes.
A system to find groups for dungeons would be great too. Sitting in an area shouting out for groups is boring and once again not very fun for all involved. When finding a group should be a one click process.
Casual people love challenges as much as hardcore fans the difference is in the amount of time they are willing to commit to overcome them. You already scale everything in the game so why not put a sliding scale to let those who want to find a challenge reduce their level to where they feel challenged. Right now I feel frustration in dungeons as I know I can’t level my character above the dungeon level. Why should I feel this way? If the dungeon level is 30 why is it different than a level 30 explorer area?
These are just basic feelings as to the general makeup of the dungeons. On top of that there are real bugs that put parties in different instances of a dungeon. Friendly NPC’s who are better left dead. Healing is inadequate many times since you are trying to eliminate healing roles.
Bottom line to me is this: I’m a casual player of MMO’s. I play with my wife and we have fun together. We’ve played Everquest I & II, WoW, DDO, FF11, FF14, DC Universe. They are fun to play with but the only two I have stuck with a long time had instances that were fun. We’ve been willing to contribute in dollars to where I’m having fun and to let go of those I’m not. Right now the game is pretty but being able to bond with players in PUG’s and dungeon instances has always been my main attractions and currently this game is not passing that test.