I messed around with the raids in SWTOR and I think raids are kind of at an evolutionary deadend so far as MMORPG is concerned, especially the RPG part. I did the Eternity Vault on Normal and while there's supposed to be two modes above it, the encounters are supposed to be the same just bigger numbers. Basically, MMORPG raids are more like action games. They have more in common with Super Mario than anything that'd normally be called a RPG. All of them invariably gets down to requiring you to move around like crazy dodging 15 kinds of obstacles. And yet it's not really that hard. If you play Diablo 2 with a melee class (Hammerdin is not a melee) at level 25 and force yourself with only a belt of potions and no retreating, Diablo on Normal is probably a lot harder than any raid in any recent MMOROPG. Of course, since you're not limited to one life or even level 25, everyone can beat Diablo on Normal but very few can actually get very hard on the upper tier of raids. Still, a fight like Diablo on Normal involves far more fancy footworks if Diablo has the common mechanism allowed in a MMORPG boss (i.e. heals to 100% when you die, and enrage). So of course then it begs the question, why raid in MMORPG when you can play Diablo 3 or Torchlight 2? It's arguably a harder game, though you can always beat it by the fact that single player games like that don't have boss heal to 100% whenever you die or give you only 3 minutes to kill them.
The last game that had raids that felt like RPGs was EverQuest. Take the simplest raids in EQ, Vox and Nagafen. The dragons do an AE fear, a huge breath attack (that is not avoidable, because 10 years ago there wasn't frontal arc calculations), and they hit hard. The dragon's breath attacks will outdamage your healer even healing at maximum capacity (which is not remotely sustainable) so it's all about killing the dragons before you run out of mana, and if you've good gear to deal with the breath attacks you might survive one more AE than another character which actually is quite significant given how short the fight is. Of course, EQ raids really aren't very challenging, since if you can do X once you can always do it if you only have to be standing still casting a certain sequence. I guess to ensure victory cannot be trivially repeated this is why all the raids involve fancy footworks, except for the most part if you can do fancy footworks once, you can probably do it again unless you were drunk the next time.
It's true I haven't plaeyd too many American RPGs, but I don't remember Baldur's Gate or Might and Magic involve moving around like a madman or instantly dying. I played Dragon Age a bit and again it'd appear the focus of the difficulty is not around action elements, since otherwise it should be called an action game. Of course Japanese RPG which are often turn-based cannot possibly have any movement elements (it'd be trivial). Yet when it comes to MMORPGs, action apparently reigns supreme for a genre that is supposed to be definitely not action-based. But I'm not sure if there's a good way out of this. Part of the problem I think is that game systems are becoming too complicated so that the developers have no idea what the heck is the maximum capacity of a raid, so if you try to design a resource-management encounter, a lot of time you just end up with 'infinite mana' ala WoW and then of course you cannot possibly expect to defeat anybody based on resource management if there is infinite resources. The original EQ had fairly predictable and easy to calculate stuff. Your healers have X mana, which can translate to at most Y HPS. If the boss does more than Y HPS, then at some point you'll run out of mana and die. So a boss can do some really simple mechanics and still be extremely difficult to defeat. And really, isn't that what RPG supposed to be? I thought it's supposed to be about progressing your character (level in single player, gear in multiplayer) until you are strong enough to outlast the boss? I mean if you lose to a boss in a FF game or Dragon Age, your first thing to try would usually be 'get more levels'. But that's never the case in a MMORPG except for the gear-check encounter. If you wipe to something, you usually have to figure out a better way to jump from A to B while dodging C and D.
Random aside, I think frontal AE, especially dragon breath, is the most unrealistic mechanism I've ever seen. Usually these attacks can basically kill anyone except the tank, and you're fighting a being whose intelligence FAR surpasses that of yours, but apparently he hasn't realized that he should use his most devastating attack on all the guys who are behind him who have no chance of surviving? It's one thing aggro itself might be unreasonable simulation of what fantasy reality ought to be, but even if you assume there's this magic mechanism that makes you hate the guy who is usually the hardest guy to kill, it shouldn't be very hard to realize you can still turn around before unleashing a breath attack of doom.
The last game that had raids that felt like RPGs was EverQuest. Take the simplest raids in EQ, Vox and Nagafen. The dragons do an AE fear, a huge breath attack (that is not avoidable, because 10 years ago there wasn't frontal arc calculations), and they hit hard. The dragon's breath attacks will outdamage your healer even healing at maximum capacity (which is not remotely sustainable) so it's all about killing the dragons before you run out of mana, and if you've good gear to deal with the breath attacks you might survive one more AE than another character which actually is quite significant given how short the fight is. Of course, EQ raids really aren't very challenging, since if you can do X once you can always do it if you only have to be standing still casting a certain sequence. I guess to ensure victory cannot be trivially repeated this is why all the raids involve fancy footworks, except for the most part if you can do fancy footworks once, you can probably do it again unless you were drunk the next time.
It's true I haven't plaeyd too many American RPGs, but I don't remember Baldur's Gate or Might and Magic involve moving around like a madman or instantly dying. I played Dragon Age a bit and again it'd appear the focus of the difficulty is not around action elements, since otherwise it should be called an action game. Of course Japanese RPG which are often turn-based cannot possibly have any movement elements (it'd be trivial). Yet when it comes to MMORPGs, action apparently reigns supreme for a genre that is supposed to be definitely not action-based. But I'm not sure if there's a good way out of this. Part of the problem I think is that game systems are becoming too complicated so that the developers have no idea what the heck is the maximum capacity of a raid, so if you try to design a resource-management encounter, a lot of time you just end up with 'infinite mana' ala WoW and then of course you cannot possibly expect to defeat anybody based on resource management if there is infinite resources. The original EQ had fairly predictable and easy to calculate stuff. Your healers have X mana, which can translate to at most Y HPS. If the boss does more than Y HPS, then at some point you'll run out of mana and die. So a boss can do some really simple mechanics and still be extremely difficult to defeat. And really, isn't that what RPG supposed to be? I thought it's supposed to be about progressing your character (level in single player, gear in multiplayer) until you are strong enough to outlast the boss? I mean if you lose to a boss in a FF game or Dragon Age, your first thing to try would usually be 'get more levels'. But that's never the case in a MMORPG except for the gear-check encounter. If you wipe to something, you usually have to figure out a better way to jump from A to B while dodging C and D.
Random aside, I think frontal AE, especially dragon breath, is the most unrealistic mechanism I've ever seen. Usually these attacks can basically kill anyone except the tank, and you're fighting a being whose intelligence FAR surpasses that of yours, but apparently he hasn't realized that he should use his most devastating attack on all the guys who are behind him who have no chance of surviving? It's one thing aggro itself might be unreasonable simulation of what fantasy reality ought to be, but even if you assume there's this magic mechanism that makes you hate the guy who is usually the hardest guy to kill, it shouldn't be very hard to realize you can still turn around before unleashing a breath attack of doom.
