traps do damage that is so low its a joke, and every class seems very cookie cutter...am I wrong? And other than looks will 1 guardian fighter be any different than the next? feats are just talent trees? I'm so lost I thought this was supposed to be "in the spirit of DnD"? It looks like its in more of the spirit of a tera meets wow with a FR overtone?
desdain01Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero UsersPosts: 18Arc User
edited February 2013
Yeah, not sure what they were thinking. Super casual play seems to be the bane of real players.
0
axer128Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited February 2013
Yea DDO is suffering the same fate sadly. Originally it was a extremely tough, hardcore mmo. But as time went on, the casual/less skilled players cried and cried until it was severely toned down.
Luckily they had difficulty settings though, and expanded them to a total of 8 different settings. Though these days its
"Heroic modes: joke-mode, what?, casual, moderate"
"Epic modes: joke-mode, casual, normal, hard"
It's top difficult is at least quite a bit step up above NWO.
Really their idea atm seems to be to make the first 50% of the game a joke, then you get to normal difficulty, then endgame they said would be "hard enough that the devs cant beat it".. So maybe kinda moderate difficulty for hardcore gamers, but impossible for the casuals.
Really you can't cater to both markets without at least two difficulty settings, so we will either end up with a game thats a joke the whole way through for the hardcores..
Or one where its a easy game through the first bit of the game, and the endgames fun and challenging for us.. But the casuals will complain on the forums about the drastic change in the games difficulty towards endgame so much it will eventually get nerfed down =/
And yea the early gameplay-customization is pretty limited, however as a fast-paced action mmo, I do think one player can really stand out far above another as the most important thing is more about how you play and set up your hotbar.. So in a sense it does have that depth..
I mean my guardian fighter was generally outdamaging/outkilling even most rogues (who when played well are far ahead of guardians) in the first few dungeons simply by playing a lot more aggressively.. Where as other guardian fighters in the same group tended to deal very little damage, take little as I did the tanking, and score dead last in kills. (Via the nice built in stats window seen at the end of dungeons).
silvergryphMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 740Arc User
edited February 2013
Some of the traps in the Foundry content seemed to be more damaging so at least that's possible.
And characters can have diversity. The class I went highest with was a Trickster Rogue. I had enough powers available to choose between a build that favored standard blade attacks, shadow powers, or even ranged attacks. I could use feats and gear to concentrate on crits, more sustained damage, cooldown reduction, action point regeneration, etc. There will probably be an active build community with plenty to talk about.
Yeah, not sure what they were thinking. Super casual play seems to be the bane of real players.
Oh noes! We can't have just anyone enjoy an Mmo
Moar seriously though, I'm inclined to hope that the Foundry will help with this. Im sure there's will be people that will make stuff that will try and hand you your ascot.
Here we are now going to the West Side
Weapons in hand as we go for a ride
Some may come and some may stay
Watching out for a sunny day
Where there's love and darkness and my sidearm
In game as @forgemccain
A leader of The Blackwatch Defenders
I'm a long term MMO player and there was some difficulty in the quests by the time you hit the undead part (something plague forget the name now), it dropped down a bit for the pirate part after that, but I came close to dying a few times at least. It was still pretty early though and you can literally get there in a few hours of play...so that is promising for the long term.
The traps were not that strong....yet.....but I'm sure they will get worse. Since each dungeon is at least supposed to be possible by any character with a companion, it makes sense the traps are not going to be instant kill traps...since not all characters can see them.
I think the game has great potential and in many ways you can control how much difficulty there is yourself, by choosing what you fight, how many enemies you fight at once, how fast you move on in the content (do you do all the side missions and level up as much as possible?) etc.
I agree, there was no difficulty at through the cloak tower raid (heck i think that could have been solo'd easily as well..certainly wasn't hard in any party I joined), but it did start to get a bit more difficult after that at least.
We have not seen even half the content, and it's been stated that the difficulty steadily ramps up. The first 20 levels are getting you used to the system and introducing you to things like companions, mounts etc. Consider it the newbie levels.
Leveling was still fast from 20-30...but I'm betting it slows down steadily after that..and the difficulty probably also steadily increases as well.
as for the cookie cutter builds theory im with this
"Essentially it’s a way for Cryptic to add additional builds of classes later when they continue to expand the game, without having to stray too much away from the names of real D&D base classes."
Yea DDO is suffering the same fate sadly. Originally it was a extremely tough, hardcore mmo. But as time went on, the casual/less skilled players cried and cried until it was severely toned down.
Luckily they had difficulty settings though, and expanded them to a total of 8 different settings. Though these days its
"Heroic modes: joke-mode, what?, casual, moderate"
"Epic modes: joke-mode, casual, normal, hard"
It's top difficult is at least quite a bit step up above NWO.
Really their idea atm seems to be to make the first 50% of the game a joke, then you get to normal difficulty, then endgame they said would be "hard enough that the devs cant beat it".. So maybe kinda moderate difficulty for hardcore gamers, but impossible for the casuals.
Really you can't cater to both markets without at least two difficulty settings, so we will either end up with a game thats a joke the whole way through for the hardcores..
Or one where its a easy game through the first bit of the game, and the endgames fun and challenging for us.. But the casuals will complain on the forums about the drastic change in the games difficulty towards endgame so much it will eventually get nerfed down =/
And yea the early gameplay-customization is pretty limited, however as a fast-paced action mmo, I do think one player can really stand out far above another as the most important thing is more about how you play and set up your hotbar.. So in a sense it does have that depth..
I mean my guardian fighter was generally outdamaging/outkilling even most rogues (who when played well are far ahead of guardians) in the first few dungeons simply by playing a lot more aggressively.. Where as other guardian fighters in the same group tended to deal very little damage, take little as I did the tanking, and score dead last in kills. (Via the nice built in stats window seen at the end of dungeons).
They have been saying since forever that they wanted this game to be solo able for the most part with delves being harder. I don't get why you expect dark souls difficulty Shade or EE difficulty.
In all seriousness though. I think the Foundry will be your best bet.
These days games have easier difficulty as there are more players out there who prefer easier difficulty. Cryptic&PWE want NW to be played by as many players as possible, so of course they won't be going hardcore, especially not at start.
But there is the Founfry and I'm sure, some people will come up some real hard quests.
In all seriousness though. I think the Foundry will be your best bet.
These days games have easier difficulty as there are more players out there who prefer easier difficulty. Cryptic&PWE want NW to be played by as many players as possible, so of course they won't be going hardcore, especially not at start.
But there is the Founfry and I'm sure, some people will come up some real hard quests.
As far as I know, PCs that are LV1 will fight a LV1 beholder, LV20 PCs will fight a LV20 dragon, and LV60 kobolds will show up with a LV60 PC. All you can change for encounters is whether the fight is Easy, Medium, or Hard. I don't know if the traps scale to HP, though.
As far as I know, PCs that are LV1 will fight a LV1 beholder, LV20 PCs will fight a LV20 dragon, and LV60 kobolds will show up with a LV60 PC. All you can change for encounters is whether the fight is Easy, Medium, or Hard. I don't know if the traps scale to HP, though.
Um, if monsters scale to your level I certainly didn't notice it, or get that impression. It seemed like they got easier as you leveled up (although that may have been from outdoor missions and not instanced ones). I didn't get to do any solo missions multiple times right after leveling so I can't tell for sure.
If monsters scale to your level (and especially if traps do etc) that would kinda blow. HP max is already stable across the classes (only factor seems to be Con's boost to max hp), so if you don't get more powerful compared to your enemies by leveling up....well the only real difference then is what types of attacks your using to fight enemies with.
At least it seems like leveling up does have an affect on outdoor missions/enemies though.
Um, if monsters scale to your level I certainly didn't notice it, or get that impression. It seemed like they got easier as you leveled up (although that may have been from outdoor missions and not instanced ones). I didn't get to do any solo missions multiple times right after leveling so I can't tell for sure.
If monsters scale to your level (and especially if traps do etc) that would kinda blow. HP max is already stable across the classes (only factor seems to be Con's boost to max hp), so if you don't get more powerful compared to your enemies by leveling up....well the only real difference then is what types of attacks your using to fight enemies with.
At least it seems like leveling up does have an affect on outdoor missions/enemies though.
I'm just going by what I've heard most recently. Weak monsters might be because of beta, and maybe they haven't put in the scaling system yet. I don't know, I haven't even played the game yet.
Things will most likely be different when it goes live. People are forgetting it is beta and are simply putting too much thought into the current state of the game.
However, TWARPS! needs to be strong and deadly. The rogue must be a vital addition to many of the dungeons imo.
Ahhh DDO, remember when Elite low level harbor quests would wipe entire parties? When Elite traps were a death sentence? Then the players complained. "IT was too hard!" (well it was on ELITE so why not just run it normal or hard and leave Elite for the few who enjoy it?) "I should not have to take a stinking Rogue with me!" (Then do not run it on ELITE and you can heal your way through them). etc.
A game based on grouping - As DDO was - changed so that you did not need a good group, so that everyone could run elite and feel special.
NW is just easy right now. Not DDO easy either - I am talking close your eyes and spam attacks while eating cheetos and watching tv easy. So yeah, that was hopefully beta and it will get better.
I do hope that the foundry will allow for more difficult adventures - even some that REQUIRE a certain class to be in the group. Deadly traps, deadly encounters, etc. Let there be some way to challenge the really good players and keep them engaged.
(Note: I am my guilds token gimp. I freely admit to my non uberness. Thank you)
The problem with this kind of thinking is if you dumb things down so just anyone can play, you are now making it so the people who want a challenge are not having fun. Why should the people that want something to be less hard have more right to their fun in the game than the people who want something to be harder?
A solution is to make hard content and easy content and let both groups have their fun. The problem is that then the people who can't handle the hard content whine like 6 year olds and the hard content becomes easy abd again the people who like hard content are left out in the cold in favor of the people who like easy content. People who are not as good are going to go into really hard foundry content and complain when they get steamrolled, even if it is clear in the description that the content is hard. The complaining will continue (if the past is any indication of the future ) until Cryptic makes content easier thereby making the people that want to challenge unhappy.
I really really hope that Cryptic tells people to <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> off when they start complaining about some foundry content being to hard.
0
kamaliiciousMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 0Arc User
The problem with this kind of thinking is if you dumb things down so just anyone can play, you are now making it so the people who want a challenge are not having fun. Why should the people that want something to be less hard have more right to their fun in the game than the people who want something to be harder?
The problem is I was poking fun at the elitist attitude that is something isn't painfully difficult is is 'too easy' and it can't possibly be good.
That's why, in the very next breath, so to speak, I said 'more seriously...'
But there is a point there. Difficulty is in the eye of the beholder. And casual gamers are far far in the majority. And if an MMO wants to be successful, really successful these gamers have to be accommodated.
Thus the default portions of the game will not, and cannot be 'hard enough' for the 'its too easy' crowd.
A solution is to make hard content and easy content and let both groups have their fun. The problem is that then the people who can't handle the hard content whine like 6 year olds and the hard content becomes easy abd again the people who like hard content are left out in the cold in favor of the people who like easy content. People who are not as good are going to go into really hard foundry content and complain when they get steamrolled, even if it is clear in the description that the content is hard. The complaining will continue (if the past is any indication of the future ) until Cryptic makes content easier thereby making the people that want to challenge unhappy.
I agree, thus my suggestion and hope that Foundry content should fill that niche.
However, I know from past experience that unless it so eyebleedingly tough that only a perfectly tuned, maximum geared and hopelessly nerdy group can jut barely complete it.. it's not going to be good enough.
I really really hope that Cryptic tells people to <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> off when they start complaining about some foundry content being to hard.
I hope they can include some sort of difficulty flag for that content, so they can say, Well.. the author warned you..". And prevents 'thumbs downs' or what ever from people who got facerolled.
Here we are now going to the West Side
Weapons in hand as we go for a ride
Some may come and some may stay
Watching out for a sunny day
Where there's love and darkness and my sidearm
In game as @forgemccain
A leader of The Blackwatch Defenders
But there is a point there. Difficulty is in the eye of the beholder. And casual gamers are far far in the majority. And if an MMO wants to be successful, really successful these gamers have to be accommodated.
Thus the default portions of the game will not, and cannot be 'hard enough' for the 'its too easy' crowd.
See I disagree with this. People use the term casual gamer to me unskilled gamer. I work 70-80 hours a week and don't have time to put in serious amounts of time playing and consider myself a casual gamer, but I don't want a faceroll game I want a challenge. I don't want to play a Basketball game against a 9 year old and then get in their face when I win in my sleep. I want to play against someone who is as good if not better than I am. I find the premise that casual means face roll incorrect. I am no gamer god, but if I can go in and roll a dungeon on the first time without dying or even having to think about it, it will make me quit the game. GW2, two weeks and out. That was the shortest I have played any MMO ever by at least a month and a half.
I hope they can include some sort of difficulty flag for that content, so they can say, Well.. the author warned you..". And prevents 'thumbs downs' or what ever from people who got facerolled.
I wish this was the case, but my opinion is many people will ignore any rating system on difficulty and give crappy ratings regardless. I mean that on both sides of the spectrum as well, the "less skilled" people will run a hard mission and freak out and give it crappy rating and the "more skilled" will do the same with the easy missions. People (in general) are to self centered to look at things objectively in my opinion.
See I disagree with this. People use the term casual gamer to me unskilled gamer. I work 70-80 hours a week and don't have time to put in serious amounts of time playing and consider myself a casual gamer, but I don't want a faceroll game I want a challenge.
We can debate the use of the word casual if you like. I think casual gamer is an acceptable term for the opposite of hardcore.
I am no gamer god, but if I can go in and roll a dungeon on the first time without dying or even having to think about it, it will make me quit the game.
Don't leave butt prints on the door ^_-
Honestly though, greater difficulty as a rule for MMO's has not led to success for them. High difficulty is generally reserved for end game or near end game content. None of which we've seen as yet, as far as I know all we've gotten to test [generally] is the beginning content witch -should- be easy.
I wish this was the case, but my opinion is many people will ignore any rating system on difficulty and give crappy ratings regardless. I mean that on both sides of the spectrum as well, the "less skilled" people will run a hard mission and freak out and give it crappy rating and the "more skilled" will do the same with the easy missions. People (in general) are to self centered to look at things objectively in my opinion.
Well then it will be the job of L33ts-that-call-themselves-casuals* like you to dig this stuff up and give it a rating it subjectivly deserves.
Here we are now going to the West Side
Weapons in hand as we go for a ride
Some may come and some may stay
Watching out for a sunny day
Where there's love and darkness and my sidearm
In game as @forgemccain
A leader of The Blackwatch Defenders
It seems odd that people are lacking in understanding for those that grow boored doing easy content. Hopefully they will add some sort of filter. Like the author says this is elite diff content, and such. Since casuals normally aim for getting stuff and looking cool, if they can get it easier elsewhere, then they will stay away from harder content. Atleast that is my hope. I don't want to group with rushers, casuals, kiddies, or any other group that would diminish my experience. Hopefully the choice of foundry-quests will help weed out these people.
"In gaming, this is effectively impossible to define, but is usually thought of as those who believe that true "hard core" games require enthusiastic commitment and Casual Games should be ignored, if not locked out of "gaming proper" by definition (hmm...). In terms of marketing, there actually is a definition the industry uses for demographics to separate "core" games (i.e. games for gaming hobbyists) and "casual" games (i.e. games aimed at everyone). To put it another way, hard core gamers play for a challenge while casual gamers play for general fun, which is not to say hard core gamers are automatically "Stop Having Fun" Guys. In fact, some hard core gamers will play at a disadvantage in order to create a bigger challenge. "
Here we are now going to the West Side
Weapons in hand as we go for a ride
Some may come and some may stay
Watching out for a sunny day
Where there's love and darkness and my sidearm
In game as @forgemccain
A leader of The Blackwatch Defenders
"In gaming, this is effectively impossible to define, but is usually thought of as those who believe that true "hard core" games require enthusiastic commitment and Casual Games should be ignored, if not locked out of "gaming proper" by definition (hmm...). In terms of marketing, there actually is a definition the industry uses for demographics to separate "core" games (i.e. games for gaming hobbyists) and "casual" games (i.e. games aimed at everyone). To put it another way, hard core gamers play for a challenge while casual gamers play for general fun, which is not to say hard core gamers are automatically "Stop Having Fun" Guys. In fact, some hard core gamers will play at a disadvantage in order to create a bigger challenge. "
Things will most likely be different when it goes live. People are forgetting it is beta and are simply putting too much thought into the current state of the game.
Not likely. Cryptic beta's are stress tests. If anything, the game will get easier at launch.
0
edwardlMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 29Arc User
edited February 2013
Oh noes! I wasn't one shotted by a trap at my introductory level of 21 on a beta, but somehow this will form the basis of what the rest of the game is like!
Just saying, best to save the concern for when the full deck of cards are shown. There's still a whole lot of game left to see.
Ok, the very early game was super easy, so easy it was not any challenge at all. But, some players may still need that to get introduced to the game.
By the time you hit the spell plauge area (the undead area with teleporters etc), there was some difficulty. I was able to make it through without dying with my rogue because of my skill setup (lots of stealth usage was key). Even with that, great dodging skills and positioning etc, I still came close to dying a few times. I certain'y was not "bored" by the difficulty.
The pirate area after that did taper off in difficulty a bit again sadly, but it is still early in the game. Even if it was easier, I still had to pay attention when fighting. Even the early game requires you to pay attention to some extent (it's almost impossible to die...but if you mess up, you could I guess).
The point of the game is not to be so hard that those of us that play these games all the time have a hard time finishing quests, especially not early on in the game. If we are challenged enough to have to pay attention and actually use skill, that is a big step above most other MMO's.
Higher difficulty quests will come later, and....you can increase difficulty both by not spending time upping your equipment, and by skipping optional quests and progressing forward at a lower level.
From the looks of it, the early levels are there to help new players get used to the combat mechanic and their abilities, the difficulty ramps up and by 30+ It seems likely that you are going to be expected to know how to play your character..and the difficulty will reflect that.
DDO is a different game, and half the reason characters can now run through normal diff quests asleep and solo elite ones is because they have such good equipment, tomes, past life bonuses etc that make their characters waaaay more powerful. There is still plenty of difficulty running quests in that game if you play from scratch and don't transfer eq over etc.
NW will be similar I think in that as long as you don't over equip and level yourself....you still will get a good challenge out of much of the content. If you run around getting the best EQ possible for your level, and doing side quests etc so you level up 2 or 3 extra times...yeah it's going to be easy.
Can't wait to make a montage of all the people dying to traps in higher level dungeons!
And also call it "ITS A TWARP!" with POD - BOOM!
0
syfylisMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, SilverstarsPosts: 0Arc User
edited February 2013
At low lvls game should teach you how to play so it's ok if it's easy but later it should be way more difficult. The reason why should that happen is very simple.
>>>> Strong memories in your head are created by good and bad feelings, the stronger feeling is then better memory it create <<<<
So to show a example how many of you remember what you did 3 weeks ago on thursday? Most likely not many but how many of you remember when your father teach you ride a bicycle. On begining you couldn't do it , you fall and hurt yourself, maybe you saw how your father is loosing patience so it give you lot of bad feelings. Then after all the time when you learn you get proud of yourself and even your father feels good that you learnd it.
So it's ok to create challanges for people that we could call casual players because even if they fail hundred times but they succed at 101 try then it will be way better reward than geting that better lot from dungeon. Games that are easy and predictable are forgotten rather quickly.
I find it interesting how the terms casual and hardcore have been twisted to be applied as a difficulty mode. Casual means you play when you have the time available because you have a life, i.e social engagements, kids etc. Hardcore is obviously the opposite in definition, you have no life, i.e. no social engagements, no kids, etc. so therefore you can devote as much time to the game as you desire without distractions. This should not be confused with the difficulty setting of a game, and yet people do. Go figure.
Comments
Luckily they had difficulty settings though, and expanded them to a total of 8 different settings. Though these days its
"Heroic modes: joke-mode, what?, casual, moderate"
"Epic modes: joke-mode, casual, normal, hard"
It's top difficult is at least quite a bit step up above NWO.
Really their idea atm seems to be to make the first 50% of the game a joke, then you get to normal difficulty, then endgame they said would be "hard enough that the devs cant beat it".. So maybe kinda moderate difficulty for hardcore gamers, but impossible for the casuals.
Really you can't cater to both markets without at least two difficulty settings, so we will either end up with a game thats a joke the whole way through for the hardcores..
Or one where its a easy game through the first bit of the game, and the endgames fun and challenging for us.. But the casuals will complain on the forums about the drastic change in the games difficulty towards endgame so much it will eventually get nerfed down =/
And yea the early gameplay-customization is pretty limited, however as a fast-paced action mmo, I do think one player can really stand out far above another as the most important thing is more about how you play and set up your hotbar.. So in a sense it does have that depth..
I mean my guardian fighter was generally outdamaging/outkilling even most rogues (who when played well are far ahead of guardians) in the first few dungeons simply by playing a lot more aggressively.. Where as other guardian fighters in the same group tended to deal very little damage, take little as I did the tanking, and score dead last in kills. (Via the nice built in stats window seen at the end of dungeons).
-Epic Dread Vault Crushed.
Characters (Dragon): Axer (60 Guardian, Leader of Crush It!), Controller (60 Wizard), Warlocker (60 Warlock)
And characters can have diversity. The class I went highest with was a Trickster Rogue. I had enough powers available to choose between a build that favored standard blade attacks, shadow powers, or even ranged attacks. I could use feats and gear to concentrate on crits, more sustained damage, cooldown reduction, action point regeneration, etc. There will probably be an active build community with plenty to talk about.
Champions Online Advanced Forum Search
Oh noes! We can't have just anyone enjoy an Mmo
Moar seriously though, I'm inclined to hope that the Foundry will help with this. Im sure there's will be people that will make stuff that will try and hand you your ascot.
Here we are now going to the West Side
Weapons in hand as we go for a ride
Some may come and some may stay
Watching out for a sunny day
Where there's love and darkness and my sidearm
In game as @forgemccain
A leader of The Blackwatch Defenders
The traps were not that strong....yet.....but I'm sure they will get worse. Since each dungeon is at least supposed to be possible by any character with a companion, it makes sense the traps are not going to be instant kill traps...since not all characters can see them.
I think the game has great potential and in many ways you can control how much difficulty there is yourself, by choosing what you fight, how many enemies you fight at once, how fast you move on in the content (do you do all the side missions and level up as much as possible?) etc.
I agree, there was no difficulty at through the cloak tower raid (heck i think that could have been solo'd easily as well..certainly wasn't hard in any party I joined), but it did start to get a bit more difficult after that at least.
We have not seen even half the content, and it's been stated that the difficulty steadily ramps up. The first 20 levels are getting you used to the system and introducing you to things like companions, mounts etc. Consider it the newbie levels.
Leveling was still fast from 20-30...but I'm betting it slows down steadily after that..and the difficulty probably also steadily increases as well.
as for the cookie cutter builds theory im with this
"Essentially it’s a way for Cryptic to add additional builds of classes later when they continue to expand the game, without having to stray too much away from the names of real D&D base classes."
They have been saying since forever that they wanted this game to be solo able for the most part with delves being harder. I don't get why you expect dark souls difficulty Shade or EE difficulty.
Neverwinter Thieves Guild
In all seriousness though. I think the Foundry will be your best bet.
These days games have easier difficulty as there are more players out there who prefer easier difficulty. Cryptic&PWE want NW to be played by as many players as possible, so of course they won't be going hardcore, especially not at start.
But there is the Founfry and I'm sure, some people will come up some real hard quests.
As far as I know, PCs that are LV1 will fight a LV1 beholder, LV20 PCs will fight a LV20 dragon, and LV60 kobolds will show up with a LV60 PC. All you can change for encounters is whether the fight is Easy, Medium, or Hard. I don't know if the traps scale to HP, though.
Um, if monsters scale to your level I certainly didn't notice it, or get that impression. It seemed like they got easier as you leveled up (although that may have been from outdoor missions and not instanced ones). I didn't get to do any solo missions multiple times right after leveling so I can't tell for sure.
If monsters scale to your level (and especially if traps do etc) that would kinda blow. HP max is already stable across the classes (only factor seems to be Con's boost to max hp), so if you don't get more powerful compared to your enemies by leveling up....well the only real difference then is what types of attacks your using to fight enemies with.
At least it seems like leveling up does have an affect on outdoor missions/enemies though.
I'm just going by what I've heard most recently. Weak monsters might be because of beta, and maybe they haven't put in the scaling system yet. I don't know, I haven't even played the game yet.
Things will most likely be different when it goes live. People are forgetting it is beta and are simply putting too much thought into the current state of the game.
However, TWARPS! needs to be strong and deadly. The rogue must be a vital addition to many of the dungeons imo.
A game based on grouping - As DDO was - changed so that you did not need a good group, so that everyone could run elite and feel special.
NW is just easy right now. Not DDO easy either - I am talking close your eyes and spam attacks while eating cheetos and watching tv easy. So yeah, that was hopefully beta and it will get better.
I do hope that the foundry will allow for more difficult adventures - even some that REQUIRE a certain class to be in the group. Deadly traps, deadly encounters, etc. Let there be some way to challenge the really good players and keep them engaged.
(Note: I am my guilds token gimp. I freely admit to my non uberness. Thank you)
The problem with this kind of thinking is if you dumb things down so just anyone can play, you are now making it so the people who want a challenge are not having fun. Why should the people that want something to be less hard have more right to their fun in the game than the people who want something to be harder?
A solution is to make hard content and easy content and let both groups have their fun. The problem is that then the people who can't handle the hard content whine like 6 year olds and the hard content becomes easy abd again the people who like hard content are left out in the cold in favor of the people who like easy content. People who are not as good are going to go into really hard foundry content and complain when they get steamrolled, even if it is clear in the description that the content is hard. The complaining will continue (if the past is any indication of the future ) until Cryptic makes content easier thereby making the people that want to challenge unhappy.
I really really hope that Cryptic tells people to <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> off when they start complaining about some foundry content being to hard.
The problem is I was poking fun at the elitist attitude that is something isn't painfully difficult is is 'too easy' and it can't possibly be good.
That's why, in the very next breath, so to speak, I said 'more seriously...'
But there is a point there. Difficulty is in the eye of the beholder. And casual gamers are far far in the majority. And if an MMO wants to be successful, really successful these gamers have to be accommodated.
Thus the default portions of the game will not, and cannot be 'hard enough' for the 'its too easy' crowd.
I agree, thus my suggestion and hope that Foundry content should fill that niche.
However, I know from past experience that unless it so eyebleedingly tough that only a perfectly tuned, maximum geared and hopelessly nerdy group can jut barely complete it.. it's not going to be good enough.
I hope they can include some sort of difficulty flag for that content, so they can say, Well.. the author warned you..". And prevents 'thumbs downs' or what ever from people who got facerolled.
Here we are now going to the West Side
Weapons in hand as we go for a ride
Some may come and some may stay
Watching out for a sunny day
Where there's love and darkness and my sidearm
In game as @forgemccain
A leader of The Blackwatch Defenders
See I disagree with this. People use the term casual gamer to me unskilled gamer. I work 70-80 hours a week and don't have time to put in serious amounts of time playing and consider myself a casual gamer, but I don't want a faceroll game I want a challenge. I don't want to play a Basketball game against a 9 year old and then get in their face when I win in my sleep. I want to play against someone who is as good if not better than I am. I find the premise that casual means face roll incorrect. I am no gamer god, but if I can go in and roll a dungeon on the first time without dying or even having to think about it, it will make me quit the game. GW2, two weeks and out. That was the shortest I have played any MMO ever by at least a month and a half.
I wish this was the case, but my opinion is many people will ignore any rating system on difficulty and give crappy ratings regardless. I mean that on both sides of the spectrum as well, the "less skilled" people will run a hard mission and freak out and give it crappy rating and the "more skilled" will do the same with the easy missions. People (in general) are to self centered to look at things objectively in my opinion.
But it may cut down on it.
We can debate the use of the word casual if you like. I think casual gamer is an acceptable term for the opposite of hardcore.
Don't leave butt prints on the door ^_-
Honestly though, greater difficulty as a rule for MMO's has not led to success for them. High difficulty is generally reserved for end game or near end game content. None of which we've seen as yet, as far as I know all we've gotten to test [generally] is the beginning content witch -should- be easy.
Well then it will be the job of L33ts-that-call-themselves-casuals* like you to dig this stuff up and give it a rating it subjectivly deserves.
*that's a joke son, don't yea get it?
Here we are now going to the West Side
Weapons in hand as we go for a ride
Some may come and some may stay
Watching out for a sunny day
Where there's love and darkness and my sidearm
In game as @forgemccain
A leader of The Blackwatch Defenders
Then you have to define hardcore.
Sure..
Hardcore
"In gaming, this is effectively impossible to define, but is usually thought of as those who believe that true "hard core" games require enthusiastic commitment and Casual Games should be ignored, if not locked out of "gaming proper" by definition (hmm...). In terms of marketing, there actually is a definition the industry uses for demographics to separate "core" games (i.e. games for gaming hobbyists) and "casual" games (i.e. games aimed at everyone). To put it another way, hard core gamers play for a challenge while casual gamers play for general fun, which is not to say hard core gamers are automatically "Stop Having Fun" Guys. In fact, some hard core gamers will play at a disadvantage in order to create a bigger challenge. "
Here we are now going to the West Side
Weapons in hand as we go for a ride
Some may come and some may stay
Watching out for a sunny day
Where there's love and darkness and my sidearm
In game as @forgemccain
A leader of The Blackwatch Defenders
Intersting definition of hardcore.
Not likely. Cryptic beta's are stress tests. If anything, the game will get easier at launch.
Just saying, best to save the concern for when the full deck of cards are shown. There's still a whole lot of game left to see.
By the time you hit the spell plauge area (the undead area with teleporters etc), there was some difficulty. I was able to make it through without dying with my rogue because of my skill setup (lots of stealth usage was key). Even with that, great dodging skills and positioning etc, I still came close to dying a few times. I certain'y was not "bored" by the difficulty.
The pirate area after that did taper off in difficulty a bit again sadly, but it is still early in the game. Even if it was easier, I still had to pay attention when fighting. Even the early game requires you to pay attention to some extent (it's almost impossible to die...but if you mess up, you could I guess).
The point of the game is not to be so hard that those of us that play these games all the time have a hard time finishing quests, especially not early on in the game. If we are challenged enough to have to pay attention and actually use skill, that is a big step above most other MMO's.
Higher difficulty quests will come later, and....you can increase difficulty both by not spending time upping your equipment, and by skipping optional quests and progressing forward at a lower level.
From the looks of it, the early levels are there to help new players get used to the combat mechanic and their abilities, the difficulty ramps up and by 30+ It seems likely that you are going to be expected to know how to play your character..and the difficulty will reflect that.
DDO is a different game, and half the reason characters can now run through normal diff quests asleep and solo elite ones is because they have such good equipment, tomes, past life bonuses etc that make their characters waaaay more powerful. There is still plenty of difficulty running quests in that game if you play from scratch and don't transfer eq over etc.
NW will be similar I think in that as long as you don't over equip and level yourself....you still will get a good challenge out of much of the content. If you run around getting the best EQ possible for your level, and doing side quests etc so you level up 2 or 3 extra times...yeah it's going to be easy.
And also call it "ITS A TWARP!" with POD - BOOM!
>>>> Strong memories in your head are created by good and bad feelings, the stronger feeling is then better memory it create <<<<
So to show a example how many of you remember what you did 3 weeks ago on thursday? Most likely not many but how many of you remember when your father teach you ride a bicycle. On begining you couldn't do it , you fall and hurt yourself, maybe you saw how your father is loosing patience so it give you lot of bad feelings. Then after all the time when you learn you get proud of yourself and even your father feels good that you learnd it.
So it's ok to create challanges for people that we could call casual players because even if they fail hundred times but they succed at 101 try then it will be way better reward than geting that better lot from dungeon. Games that are easy and predictable are forgotten rather quickly.
My work: Heroes Blacksmith - Library
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?21051-Heroes-Blacksmith-Library