link to article about WoW dungeons meant to be hard

[donfilibuster]

Just throwing this here because it might be of interest on the discussion of DDO dungeons being made easier to cater to MMO audience.

This was over the news on game review sites recently, titled 'WoW dungeons meant to be hard':
http://www.strategyinformer.com/news/10464/wow-dungeons-meant-to-be-hard-absolutely-trivial-otherwise
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/2053469
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-01-13-blizz-cataclysm-dungeons-not-too-hard

DISCLAIMER:
I do not play WoW nor make comparison, nor advocate either view about hard dungeons or easy buttons.
As a DDO player i'm interested in having a good game with a good challenge and dislike some MMO elements like the grind.

It begins with:


Blizzard defends the difficulty of Cataclysm's dungeons, especially on heroic, saying they don't want the "under-geared or unorganised" given easy victories.

Dungeons are "gussied up loot vending machines" admits Blizzard's Greg Street, but they want players doing more just "push a button to get the loot."


then



"On the other hand, we don't want you to stumble your way to victory. We don't want you to be able to overwhelm bosses without noticing or caring what they’re doing. We don’t want healers to be able to make up for all of the mistakes on the part of the other players."


and



"Ultimately, we don’t want to give undergeared or unorganized groups a near guaranteed chance of success, because then the content will feel absolutely trivial for players in appropriate gear who communicate, cooperate, and strategize."


On this point it's implied that well geared players still have it easy, as mentioned in the article.

[Martdon]

But 'hard' in WoW, is like running an at-level quest on hard difficulty here. Sure you can't run through all the traps, but if you get a single death with a full party, somethings wrong with you

[sirgog]

But 'hard' in WoW, is like running an at-level quest on hard difficulty here. Sure you can't run through all the traps, but if you get a single death with a full party, somethings wrong with you

That's not true. 'Hard' in this context means a PUG group with appropriate gear and that communicates in text but not voice can expect to wipe more than once but less than ten times.

WoW's current 5-player Heroic difficulty dungeons are tuned to be about the difficulty of completing a 0 mana potion Epic Chains of Flame. (Heroic is WoW's equivalent of our Epic). In the previous expansion, the difficulty was closer to that of Epic VON1 - only challenging at all if you are undergeared, don't use tactics or do something stupid.

[Fafnir]

I'd personally like an even harder epic mode with better rewards. I don't find epics particularly challenging.

[Ullysses]

I'd personally like an even harder epic mode with better rewards. I don't find epics particularly challenging.

Well, depends on which Epic. Carnival and such are pretty simple. Von has some tough spots, Epic inevitable and Epic beholders can be tough. Sands are challenging if things don't go smoothly. Epic Chrono & Devil Assault can be very rough. All depends on the team you go with. Of course for some diehard players with all their dream gear, there's not much challenge left till something new comes out.

[pwentt]

I've played WoW since about 5 months after it was released till the present. I've played DDO since this summer. I find the difficulties while lvling to be easier in WoW because the biggest portion of content is at max level. However in the current expansion and even the previous expansions raids I find DDO to be much easier and a massive snooze fest in comparison. The only thing that makes DDO harder than WoW is that it is much easier to screw up your character build in DDO which can result in you being gimped for harder content. The content itself is far and away easier in DDO in my opinion.

[sirgog]

Well, depends on which Epic. Carnival and such are pretty simple. Von has some tough spots, Epic inevitable and Epic beholders can be tough. Sands are challenging if things don't go smoothly. Epic Chrono & Devil Assault can be very rough. All depends on the team you go with. Of course for some diehard players with all their dream gear, there's not much challenge left till something new comes out.

The ones you mentioned as hardest are just crowd control tests. If you have outstanding CC, even if your melees are bad, you'll thump straight through Chrono and Devil Assault. If your CC is mediocre, you will have a hard time even if you have the highest DPS melees on your server. (Into the Deep is the same prior to the Hezrou fight).

I'm trying to think of an epic that I've taken a group of solid players to (when it was brand new and none of us knew it) and we wiped over and over and over again. The toughest was probably Offering of Blood prior to it being nerfed, and that took about 3 or 4 tries to get a completion on.

[quityourjobs]

There's a number of mechanic differences between these two games that makes it difficult to judge relative challenge.
Scaling and ramping player challenge is key to game design, and takes a very subtle grasp of your audience.

I haven't played DDO long enough to see the whole picture, but one thing I liked when I started was that it was a little unforgiving. You're blind? Find a cleric or just suffer. Didn't know the trap was there? Too bad, party wipe.

Personally, I think DDO is much harder (especially on elite) until players get Raise Dead, then it goes to easy mode. I would advocate some change to the raise system (maybe just a long cooldown) as a jumping off point to increase the penalty for poor play.

[bl4uwe]

Personally, I think DDO is much harder (especially on elite) until players get Raise Dead, then it goes to easy mode. I would advocate some change to the raise system (maybe just a long cooldown) as a jumping off point to increase the penalty for poor play.

How about a system like 95% of the other MMOs. No raising in combat, only when the combat is over
I would LOVE that system to be added in DDO, it makes the game again a lot more challenging while leveling and endgame.

[sirgog]

There's a number of mechanic differences between these two games that makes it difficult to judge relative challenge.
Scaling and ramping player challenge is key to game design, and takes a very subtle grasp of your audience.

I haven't played DDO long enough to see the whole picture, but one thing I liked when I started was that it was a little unforgiving. You're blind? Find a cleric or just suffer. Didn't know the trap was there? Too bad, party wipe.

Personally, I think DDO is much harder (especially on elite) until players get Raise Dead, then it goes to easy mode. I would advocate some change to the raise system (maybe just a long cooldown) as a jumping off point to increase the penalty for poor play.


In-combat raises and near-instant cast enormous heals (from the Heal spell) are what make higher level play much easier. I think Heal is the biggest factor.


For comparison:

In DDO - Heal spell - cast time 0.7 sec, cooldown 4.5 sec, typically restores 285hp out of a pool of ~500
In WoW (at level 82) - Divine Light spell - cast time 2.2-2.5 sec (depends on gear), cooldown none, typically restores 20k HP out of a pool of 60k

[Kromize]

I'd personally like an even harder epic mode with better rewards. I don't find epics particularly challenging.

Thats because all they do is blanket them with immunities and hp... Turning this game into a pure all-out grindfest of a mousekiller... Oh wait, auto attack, push and hold, etc... Just wait and hope your hp doesnt hit 0...

The only quests I find fun in this game anymore are the ones that involve puzzles and such. Or necessary strategies. Like abbot(used to be), the pit, titan(needs to be harder and less buggy), etc... And they need to boost shroud 2 & 3 as well(I liked the 4 corners thing, but now its gather em all, beat em down, seperate and kill............)

Honestly, this games become a trash-heap compared to what it used to be for me. I'm surprised I've played as much as I have recently...

[Mavnas]

The problem is DDO lower level content can't be that hard. In WoW, you wipe, no biggie, just release and run back in. In DDO, you wipe? Oops, massive exp hit if you release and run back in. You don't complete the dungeon... there goes most of your exp. In WoW you get per mob exp. You can't kill the last boss? You still got 99.5% of the exp, you just don't get some shiny loot. In DDO, you wipe on the last guy after struggling through? You just wasted over an hour.

[sirgog]

The problem is DDO lower level content can't be that hard. In WoW, you wipe, no biggie, just release and run back in. In DDO, you wipe? Oops, massive exp hit if you release and run back in. You don't complete the dungeon... there goes most of your exp. In WoW you get per mob exp. You can't kill the last boss? You still got 99.5% of the exp, you just don't get some shiny loot. In DDO, you wipe on the last guy after struggling through? You just wasted over an hour.

That's true for many dungeons. Some have significant 'optionals' that are awarded on the way however - Devil Assault and Shroud come to mind.

Wipe in part 4 of your lowbie Shroud? It's a PITA, but you did get ~8k XP for the attempt (before diminishing returns)

[Polarkin]

I've played on both sides of the exp model. When your exp gains are tied to per-mob kills your incentive to experience other content is minimal. You find that magical spot where you get the highest return on investment per mob killed over time until such time as the mobs start giving lower experience due to your level increases. When your exp gains are tied to milestones, objectives, and completions with a deterioration penalty per x number of reoccurrances you are incentivized to go somewhere else / do something else. The issue here then becomes the disparity in exp given per quest vs. time to complete the quest so many of the people who want to level fast end up mimicing the per-mob exp grinders.

I like DDO because I can log in for 30 minutes and run a quick raid or a couple of quests and accomplish something. I can also log in for extended periods of time and grind a TR from 1 to 20 in less than two weeks.

It is very dissimiliar in other MMO's like (where I came from) Everquest. It can take days of grinding for 4-5 hours per session to gain a single level. It can take weeks or months when a new level cap comes out to gain the 5-10 levels to recap. And raiding? It can take a raid guild several months to completely flag/key a 54 person raid for content with lockout timers.

[Missing_Minds]

WoW's current 5-player Heroic difficulty dungeons are tuned to be about the difficulty of completing a 0 mana potion Epic Chains of Flame. (Heroic is WoW's equivalent of our Epic). In the previous expansion, the difficulty was closer to that of Epic VON1 - only challenging at all if you are undergeared, don't use tactics or do something stupid.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I was under the impression that WoW, you stand around you regenerate mana and HP when not in combat.

Not the case in DDO. Unless you.. have a spellsinger II with an edge or cloak, and a cleric with radiant II. And even then you are having to do something very specific unlike a standard MMO where that happens to everyone under normal case stances.

Also in wow, To do Heroics do you have to be capped?

[Lorz]

There's a number of mechanic differences between these two games that makes it difficult to judge relative challenge.
Scaling and ramping player challenge is key to game design, and takes a very subtle grasp of your audience.

I haven't played DDO long enough to see the whole picture, but one thing I liked when I started was that it was a little unforgiving. You're blind? Find a cleric or just suffer. Didn't know the trap was there? Too bad, party wipe.

Personally, I think DDO is much harder (especially on elite) until players get Raise Dead, then it goes to easy mode. I would advocate some change to the raise system (maybe just a long cooldown) as a jumping off point to increase the penalty for poor play.

Shame you were not here when it started...DDO used to be MUCH harder...things like you die you lose XP...ive lost over a whole level before :) Gold used to be very limited.....now its a joke.

Just sayin....i like the challenge too.

[Lorz]

How about a system like 95% of the other MMOs. No raising in combat, only when the combat is over
I would LOVE that system to be added in DDO, it makes the game again a lot more challenging while leveling and endgame.

If ya need to raise the bar......

I call on the powers of PARVO!!!!!


PERMA - DEATH the ultimate challenge.

Good luck we are all rooting for ya.

[My2Cents]

You want a challenge? Try solo-melee without a lot of resources to start with.

Show me an MMO that allows such a player to have access to a satisfactory percentage of the good items and rewards (eventually,.and slower than groups is OK), and I'll sign right up!

Also, as an older gamer, pressing that mouse button over and over begins to hurt after awhile. Not all gamers are teens anymore, especially in DDO. I am here to experience new content. Too much repitition and I'll eventually get bored. I left another big MMO because I hit the cap of the content I was able to access.

I mostly solo, and play with distractions often, such is my current life situation. So for me, If I had 3 requests for DDO:

- Adjust the game for us who have trouble with distractions by adjusting hireling work period
- Allow save and restore quest progress (for up to 24 hours is more than sufficient.) - disk space is cheap.
- I prefer the experience per mob or at least not requiring entire quest completion. I do not like the diminishing
quest xp for repitition and death. There ought to at least be a decay (like ransack has).

I recognize these are specific to my style and situation and may not be suitable for the other 95% of the population.
(There are more of us out there than you think!)

To watch people complaining that they've run the so-and-so raid 80 times and the uber-helm-of-everythingness has not dropped for them amazes me. I'd rather just hit my head against a wall than even bother...

Just My 2 Cents

Oh, and allow hirelings in raids, so at least I have a chance to try even a low level raid now and again...In paper DND our DM was able to adjust to group size and strength to make the adventure appropriate for whoever was there. My dream MMO would do the same...

[Kreaper]

Shame you were not here when it started...DDO used to be MUCH harder...things like you die you lose XP...ive lost over a whole level before :) Gold used to be very limited.....now its a joke.

Just sayin....i like the challenge too.

+1 You beat me to it. When this game first started you went into Water Works with full groups because you could, and would, get one hit by kobolds. Now it is easily soloed below level. The devs pushed an easy button and it got stuck.

[funnyslaughter]

I enjoy ddo as a casual gamer very much. the overall motivation stays quite high, and i am able to contend for the best gear without having a tight raid schedule with dozens of other people and the related social pressure.

But i really miss the progress raiding on new content. Having played in a top ranking guild for some years was kind of a second job, but the tactical challenges in positioning, movement and timing were extraordinary.
In DDO i can only listen to the veterans telling stories of old, with the max level being X and the raid Y being really difficult, but i find nothing like this here anymore.

On the bad side WoW had 3-4 weeks until new content was mastered (including test server time, at least for us #10 guilds worldwide), after that it was quickly becoming a grindfest and boring for quite some months while still paying.

Maybe DDO will bring some new high level raids some day, and i can participate in the exploring and conquering of new challenges here as well. until then i enjoy not being bound to a 7-12pm daily raid schedule :)

[Chai]

This happens after every single expansion in WOW - as they are on a tier level system that is much more absolute than what we see here in DDO.

Playing WOW is more of an absolute system where you need 1 tank 1 healer and 3 DPS in each group. If you are in a tier 5 dungeon, you need at least tier 4 gear or it will be VERY HARD if not IMPOSSIBLE to succeed.

When the expansions come out, people must pioneer the raids and dungeons, which literally means your group or raid group goes through the process of fighting its way in, something unexpected happening in an encounter, wiping, regrouping, fighting your way in again, making the adjustment for the first unexpected thing that occurred, getting a bit further, something ELSE unexpected happens, you wipe, regroup, do it all over again, rinse repeat until you win. The dungeons and raids are horrendous excercises in metagaming. If you are not familiar with the encounter, you WILL die. If you are in a tier 7 raid and dont have the minimum of tier 6 gear, you WILL die.

People have moaned about this after every expansion, no exceptions. Their DEVS attitudes about it are, if you dont have the gear, and knowledge of the quest, you arent going to make it. I remember when the tier 6 expansion came out, the forums were littered with people who were trying to schlub their way though that content with half a tier 5 suit, and the rest of their slots filled in with t4 PVP gear or t4-5 badge gear, which doesnt cut it. Even at the highest skill levels of play, the end result of not having the gear was usually getting through 3/4 of a raid encounter, everyone running out of resources, and wiping.

The end result to that is the new high end game is exclusively pioneered by those who earned the gear one tier level lower in every slot, and have raided together for long enough to be able to make crack decisions in a pinch.

There are positives and negatives to this. Most people dont see a good portion of the high end content, ever. On the other side of the coin, noobs dont make it to high tier raiding. It does_not_happen. Having the gear speaks for itself and speaks volumes of your ability to pull things off in situations others cant hang in. Its also a testiment to not having a life and meeting guild recruitment requirements like being logged in 8 hours a day 6 days a week.

[stoolcannon]

The first time you play DDO it is challenging. Rolling up a new toon as a first time player and not fully understanding the mechanics of the system (since they don't have much to do with PnP anymore) and heading out you will be challenged. Once you've leveled a toon, built up some platinum an some twink gear the game presents little or no challenge up until about Orchard and even then there are only 2 quests that really take more than one person and a hireling: Ghosts and Fleshmakers with the latter being only because you need someone to hit switches.

After that, the game doesn't really get any harder until you start running some of the epics that can be challenging. Chrono, DA and OOB are all challenging (OOB is pretty rough now with the Spell Resistance buff) but most of the other epics I've run haven't been challenging at all. Time consuming yes, challenging no.

[Babumbalaboo]

I think what non-WoW-players need to realize is that DDO is "difficult" in a very different way.

DDO treats your progress through a dungeon as one constant gauntlet that only ends when you reach the finish line. Conversely, WoW tracks progress on an encounter-by-encounter basis; this usually is determined by boss fights, but the creatures that you have to kill between bosses are also a factor to a lesser degree.

In DDO, a big part of the challenge comes in the form of obstacles that must be overcome; traps, puzzles, particularly powerful monsters... the most vital part of succeeding is to walk into the dungeon with the knowledge of where the obstacles are and how to overcome them, along with the necessary resources to do so.

In WoW, the challenge is quite similar, but the obstacles come in the form of the boss fights themselves. Every boss has a particular set of mechanics which require you to be proactive and/or reactive, or else face certain doom. The key components of a successful group are awareness and communication.

In both games, there is a way to cheat your way to victory, so to speak. In WoW, that method is to overgear the dungeon; if "deadly" mechanics no longer prove to be a threat to you, it is no longer vital that you pay attention to them. DDO's version of this, in addition to having uber gear, is essentially to throw your credit card at the DDO Store and buy about a bazillion potions so that hit points and spell points are no longer limited resources.

The closest thing to a WoW boss fight that I've ever encountered in DDO would probably have to be Shroud Part 4, with a legitimate Level 16 group, assuming no potions or scrolls are used. If the collective raid doesn't do enough damage, the healers run out of spell points, and you fail. If the healers miss their mark, the intimitank dies, everyone else follows hastily, and you fail. If people don't jump out of the blades when they come swirling in, they die, and you fail. If the gnolls aren't dealt with, Harry shoots right back up, and you fail. If you're standing in the wrong place, if you're doing the wrong thing, if you have no idea what the heck is going on, YOU FAIL.

This is how every boss in every heroic dungeon is in WoW these days. If you do not have prior knowledge of the encounter, you will fail. If you are not skilled enough to perform your group role as well as it needs to be performed, you will fail. If your party doesn't work out a solid, legitimate strategy, and if even a single member of your team deviates from that strategy even a tiny bit, you will fail.

That said, the strategies themselves tend to be quite simple. When the big flashy warning pops up saying "ZOMG, Evildude is casting a deadly fireball of doom at Fluffypants!", that's when Fluffypants needs to run the hell away... and many, many variants thereof.

The problem (and this is where the "difficult" part comes in) is that the average player does not know the mechanics of the encounters before entering the dungeon, he does not possess the level of awareness required to overcome these mechanics, and he does not communicate well enough with his partners to establish a proper strategy. Instead, he continues to metaphorically bang his thick skull against the wall, failing time and time again on these bosses until he realizes that he can't just faceroll his way through them. Displeased with this, he proceeds to whine to Blizzard, and this is precisely why the "heroics are hard" complaint is such a big deal.





As a closing word to this enormous novel I seem to have written, I'd like to note one other thing; in addition to these special boss mechanics, WoW players also have to deal with the challenge of trying to squeeze as much viability as possible from their class' core abilities, be it tanking, healing, or DPSing. In WoW, you do not hold down your mouse button and wait for your enemy's hit points to diminish.

Contrary to popular belief, you do not spend your time sitting and waiting for your auto-attack to do its work. As I write this very post, I have a total of 30 different abilities bound to hotkeys all over my keyboard and mouse, and each one of those abilities sees some form of regular use.

Even without taking into account the added challenge of the boss mechanics, just plain playing the game is a mental exercise in reactionary tactics. Just because it isn't twitch-based combat doesn't mean it's not difficult to perform at your peak.

[KongColeus]

He realizes that a party's mistakes can be made up for by a decent playing cleric.

This just shows that players that play clerics are the best and should be thanked, coddled, and given first choice of EVERYONE's raid loot. Even if they can't use it.

Thanks in advance.

This post is meant as a zinger. It looks like Greg Street probably plays DDO and is making some subtle comparisons of WOW to DDO. I have not ever seen WoW, played WoW, nor will I at this time.

[sirgog]

Correct me if I'm wrong but I was under the impression that WoW, you stand around you regenerate mana and HP when not in combat.

Not the case in DDO. Unless you.. have a spellsinger II with an edge or cloak, and a cleric with radiant II. And even then you are having to do something very specific unlike a standard MMO where that happens to everyone under normal case stances.

Also in wow, To do Heroics do you have to be capped?

In WoW, you can rely on starting almost every encounter at full HP, and depending upon your class, either 100% or none of your other renewable resources (SP, Focus, Runes, Runic Power, etc). A small number of encounters (such as parts 2 and 3 of the Northrend Beasts encounter in an old raid) don't allow you this chance to refresh before subsequent fights, but this is the exception.

To do Heroics in WoW you need to be at least at what the level cap was when that dungeon was made heroic, and noone ever really does the 'older' ones, so yeah, you need to be capped to do the ones that matter.