I was looking at more raiding in MMORPG and thought about how in general hard raids or rather hard games in general seems to be a completely failure in concept. While it sounds pretty cool in design I can't think of a single game that was successfully because it was actually hard. I forgot who said it but just because you're the best players in whatever genre doesn't mean you can possibly enjoy playing at such intensity for extended time. There should be the equivalent of faceroll encounters even on the high end. It wouldn't be very fun if you play Street Fighter and you've to fight Shin Akuma every stage, even if you can beat him. If you look at the turnover for any high end raiding game it's pretty much always a revolving door, because not only is it stressful but you have to deal with guys who are likely jerks and you'll find either you suck compared to them, or they suck compared to you. Very rarely do you get this magic union where everyone is exactly as good as each other and you work together toward a greater cause.
Looking back at games like Diablo 2 or EQ1, I think they had the right idea with difficulty being time-gated, and being good allows you to spend significantly less time. Anybody could beat Diablo 2 given enough time but if you're actually good at the game you can do MF runs a lot more efficiently. EQ1 is honestly not that hard and most of the effort is waiting for the right gear to drop so you can finally meet the encounter's benchmarks, but if you don't totally suck at the game you don't need 6 months farming worth of gear to beat something and that's kind of cool. From the WoW generation of games, it seems like the time-gated difficulty have been abandoned, which is rather ironic as the only hard part of Diablo 2 is that it took a lot of time to get the best possible gear. Now if you want to eliminate time-gated difficulty that's fine. Something like LFR in WoW could work but if you remove time-gated difficulty don't pretend the high end game is going to be at all playable. It's going to be the guys who are good enough will always beat the encounter in the first week if not the first day unless your difficulty is broken, while 99.9% of the guys still can't beat it except when they're posting about the game online. I am not sure if I ever beat Shin Akuma at all in a Street Fighter game (in the challenge forms, not when he's dumbed down to be a regular boss battle), and it's something nobody besides the very hardcore would care about. It's fine if you make him a rare achievement but if you expect a significant amount of the game's value come from that, it's not going to work. I can't see the all-or-nothing concept ever working in a game that expects popular appeal. That is, your players have to be this good, doesn't matter the type of game, to beat it or you'll never beat it, because frankly most games are nowhere near good enough to warrant actually learning let alone improving at the game, and I've played games long enough to think that some players will never get better anyway. Developers have the cause and effect mixed up. It's not that a player should learn to get good at your game to enjoy it. It's that you should enjoy the game so you want to get better at it. In EQ1 if you have enough primal weapons you'll eventually beat the Avatar of War even though only 1 guild beat him legitimately before the next expansion. This is because primal weapons have extremely low drop rate you'd be lucky to have 1/4 of your DPS with them. But the better guilds can actually beat him with 1/4 primal weapons while the lesser guilds need more. Now that time frame is probably a bit ridiculous for a modern game, but the underlying concept is sound. Better guilds need less to win but other people can eventually win, and hopefully your game is well designed such that eventually means 'before the next paying expansion'. EQ1 failed because eventually eventually meant 'after 3 years and $500 worth of sub + expansion costs" and of course most people bailed long before that.
Looking back at games like Diablo 2 or EQ1, I think they had the right idea with difficulty being time-gated, and being good allows you to spend significantly less time. Anybody could beat Diablo 2 given enough time but if you're actually good at the game you can do MF runs a lot more efficiently. EQ1 is honestly not that hard and most of the effort is waiting for the right gear to drop so you can finally meet the encounter's benchmarks, but if you don't totally suck at the game you don't need 6 months farming worth of gear to beat something and that's kind of cool. From the WoW generation of games, it seems like the time-gated difficulty have been abandoned, which is rather ironic as the only hard part of Diablo 2 is that it took a lot of time to get the best possible gear. Now if you want to eliminate time-gated difficulty that's fine. Something like LFR in WoW could work but if you remove time-gated difficulty don't pretend the high end game is going to be at all playable. It's going to be the guys who are good enough will always beat the encounter in the first week if not the first day unless your difficulty is broken, while 99.9% of the guys still can't beat it except when they're posting about the game online. I am not sure if I ever beat Shin Akuma at all in a Street Fighter game (in the challenge forms, not when he's dumbed down to be a regular boss battle), and it's something nobody besides the very hardcore would care about. It's fine if you make him a rare achievement but if you expect a significant amount of the game's value come from that, it's not going to work. I can't see the all-or-nothing concept ever working in a game that expects popular appeal. That is, your players have to be this good, doesn't matter the type of game, to beat it or you'll never beat it, because frankly most games are nowhere near good enough to warrant actually learning let alone improving at the game, and I've played games long enough to think that some players will never get better anyway. Developers have the cause and effect mixed up. It's not that a player should learn to get good at your game to enjoy it. It's that you should enjoy the game so you want to get better at it. In EQ1 if you have enough primal weapons you'll eventually beat the Avatar of War even though only 1 guild beat him legitimately before the next expansion. This is because primal weapons have extremely low drop rate you'd be lucky to have 1/4 of your DPS with them. But the better guilds can actually beat him with 1/4 primal weapons while the lesser guilds need more. Now that time frame is probably a bit ridiculous for a modern game, but the underlying concept is sound. Better guilds need less to win but other people can eventually win, and hopefully your game is well designed such that eventually means 'before the next paying expansion'. EQ1 failed because eventually eventually meant 'after 3 years and $500 worth of sub + expansion costs" and of course most people bailed long before that.
