Do you miss the time when games dared to let players fail, or do you prefere the "no risk" method?

mann9753b16_ESO · June 2019

Before anything, I really love about...90% of ESO. I love the story, the classes, the world, the NPCs... all of it. And even the difficulty and the no risk model is not a gamebreaker for me, because the rest of the game is just really great. So, please save the "Then why do you play this game" comments. I play it because its a good game. You can have a criticism about something you like. Many people seem to forget this these days...

I also aint talking about the hardcore oldschool MMORPGs, that had to be your second job when you wanted to be good at it. I will stick to casual games, mostly ESO and Vanilla WoW.

So, back to topic.

Modern games have evolved to a point where challenge seems to become a bad thing, something that game developers wish to avoid at all costs, unless they go to the other extreme and push it to Dark Souls levels, especially in modern MMORPGs.

A Good example for that is escort Quests or quests where you have to protect stuff. In ESO, when you get the mission to protect something, you will notice that the mobs spawning dont have any real interest to actually attack whetever you have to defend, or if they do, they cant destroy it, even if you go AFK for an hour during the mission. While the Quest objective says "defend this thing", what actually happens is "Kill X enemys" or "Wait for X Seconds". There isnt really a way to fail.

Same goes for most enemys. None of them seem really dangerous, even if you pull a big group while alone, no problem.

Thats basically what "Casual" has become these days, literally a no risk enviroment, where everyone is supposed to feel special and smart and powerful, no matter what.

If we look at what Casual meant about 15 years ago, we have Classic WoW. Bakc then casual meant you dont have to invest your life to succeed, but it also wasnt just given to you. Blindly rushing into enemys got you killed, ignoring the quest objective could make the quest fail. It wasnt really hard, but it still requiered some effort from your part to succeed. In return, once you finaly finished a mission after the third attempt, you not only felt good about it, you actually became better at the game. Challenges are there for a reason, to make sure you learned the mechanics the game expects you to learn to this point...

But now? Well, lets see it that way, how many player reach level 50, 160CP, playing tank/Heal/DPS all game long, but once they get to DLC Dungeons they notice they have no idea how to actually tank/heal/DPS right? And why? Because they never had to learn it. THe game until now handed them everything for free, with a great "YOU ARE AWESOME!" card attached to it. Is that really the way to make games now?

Where exactly is the point? Are companies too afraid to challenge us, or is it the generation of gamers today, who ragequit the first time they fail at something and declare "THIS GAME IS STUPID!" instead of trying to see what they did wrong?

Tigerseye · June 2019

Biased poll is biased.

Even though you have made it crystal clear where you are coming from, you should have made the answers to the poll less biased and probably, also, offered a third "other" type option.

Not many people are going to want to choose option 2, with the "I just want easy success" comment after it.

Not to mention that if you are very new to the game, very young and/or disabled in some way, it might not be risk-free, or overly easy, as it is.

I remember dying, or almost dying, to a couple of delve bosses when I was very low level, with found armour and no CP.

Tasear · June 2019

I kinda miss games that dared to make me repeat quests when I screwed up...

There's some quests that are um fun. Like spent 2 days on this shealth quests. I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong. I even googled it. Turns out need to use cat as distraction go figure.

It wasn't hard and clearly most people got it right away, but it was rewarding experience.

mann9753b16_ESO · June 2019

I kinda miss games that dared to make me repeat quests when I screwed up...

Tasear wrote: »

There's some quests that are um fun. Like spent 2 days on this shealth quests. I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong. I even googled it. Turns out need to use cat as distraction go figure.

It wasn't hard and clearly most people got it right away, but it was rewarding experience.

I think I know the quest you mean, and you actually offered me another great example here.

We are talking about the Story Quest in Eastmarch here, where you have to get the Wine for Naryu, right?

Why is that a good example? Because she actually TELLS you to get a cat first, but most people wont bother to read or listen to her, because... why? Most quests in this game dont requier any setup, any thinking, any actuall effort, just go there, kill/take stuff, go back.

I often encountered players who were actually overwhelmed the second the game doesnt exactly tells them what to do.

Theres a Quest in Shadowfen, where you have to read 3 Books and use whats written in them to match 3 Items to 3 Chests, and later to read a poem and find out which out of 5 pages is the one missing from the poem...

Both are really easy when you just sit down and read the texts, but ive seen most players either randomly trying stuff or being totaly overwhelmed and asking for the answer.

Tasear · June 2019

I kinda miss games that dared to make me repeat quests when I screwed up...

mann9753b16_ESO wrote: »

Tasear wrote: »

There's some quests that are um fun. Like spent 2 days on this shealth quests. I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong. I even googled it. Turns out need to use cat as distraction go figure.

It wasn't hard and clearly most people got it right away, but it was rewarding experience.

I think I know the quest you mean, and you actually offered me another great example here.

We are talking about the Story Quest in Eastmarch here, where you have to get the Wine for Naryu, right?

Why is that a good example? Because she actually TELLS you to get a cat first, but most people wont bother to read or listen to her, because... why? Most quests in this game dont requier any setup, any thinking, any actuall effort, just go there, kill/take stuff, go back.

I often encountered players who were actually overwhelmed the second the game doesnt exactly tells them what to do.

Theres a Quest in Shadowfen, where you have to read 3 Books and use whats written in them to match 3 Items to 3 Chests, and later to read a poem and find out which out of 5 pages is the one missing from the poem...

Both are really easy when you just sit down and read the texts, but ive seen most players either randomly trying stuff or being totaly overwhelmed and asking for the answer.

🤣 I deserve it then. I have another issue where npcs just talk so freaking slow. Like if I can listen to dragon age...

Like I seriously hate quests in ESO for so many reasons and I find it a pity.

Browiseth · June 2019

No, I really dont want a risk in my games, I just want easy success.

i need you to define what "challenge" is to you for me, please. You mentioned dark souls, but dark souls...it really isn't that hard. it has a learning curve, just like ESO, but it's not the most challenging game ever. i would honestly argue ESO is harder to master than any souls game.

you aren't entirely wrong that games have become "easier" as of recent, but how much of that is improved game design to make games more intuitive to play? lots of "hard" games in the past were designed poorly, and that was where the challenge came from.

your post lacks a lot of nuance to address just how complex game design can be.

mann9753b16_ESO · June 2019

I kinda miss games that dared to make me repeat quests when I screwed up...

Tigerseye wrote: »

Not many people are going to want to choose option 2, with the "I just want easy success" comment after it.

But that is exactly what this "no risk" enviroment is.

I mean, what can happen to you? If you die, you can just respawn. Soul Gems are a dime a dozen. And you can beat all open world enemys in the game by just spamming light/heavy attacks on them.

Tigerseye wrote: »

Not to mention that if you are very new to the game, very young and/or disabled in some way, it might not be risk-free, or overly easy, as it is.

Guess what, young players were totaly able to beat hard games in the era where games were actually really hard compared to today. young kids managed to beat all these Plattform games that punished you with permadeath, young kids managed to beat games where enemys could kill you, they were able to beat all those games. And they had fun doing so.

And stop the "But Disabilities" Strawmen, game journalists trying to bash on Soul like games used this excuse, and it resulted in actual disabled people uploading videos of them beating the games, telling them to stop using them as an excuse for their own failures.

Tasear · June 2019

I kinda miss games that dared to make me repeat quests when I screwed up...

Browiseth wrote: »

i need you to define what "challenge" is to you for me, please. You mentioned dark souls, but dark souls...it really isn't that hard. it has a learning curve, just like ESO, but it's not the most challenging game ever. i would honestly argue ESO is harder to master than any souls game.

you aren't entirely wrong that games have become "easier" as of recent, but how much of that is improved game design to make games more intuitive to play? lots of "hard" games in the past were designed poorly, and that was where the challenge came from.

your post lacks a lot of nuance to address just how complex game design can be.

I personally think it's not hard eso lacks but enagagemt especially in base game quests. You can't have just good story design to make fun quests.

MLGProPlayer · June 2019

I kinda miss games that dared to make me repeat quests when I screwed up...

Browiseth wrote: »

i would honestly argue ESO is harder to master than any souls game.

Vet dungeons and trials? Sure. But OP is talking about questing.

Imperial_Voice · June 2019

This poll is one of the most biased Ive seen in a long time. The only way it could be worse is if it said "Yes I agree with OP" or "No I am a waste of a human being"

mann9753b16_ESO · June 2019

I kinda miss games that dared to make me repeat quests when I screwed up...

Browiseth wrote: »

i need you to define what "challenge" is to you for me, please. You mentioned dark souls, but dark souls...it really isn't that hard. it has a learning curve, just like ESO, but it's not the most challenging game ever. i would honestly argue ESO is harder to master than any souls game.

you aren't entirely wrong that games have become "easier" as of recent, but how much of that is improved game design to make games more intuitive to play? lots of "hard" games in the past were designed poorly, and that was where the challenge came from.

your post lacks a lot of nuance to address just how complex game design can be.

I thought I did this in my post, but I am more than happy to try to explain it better.

The Challenge I am talking about is simply the risk to actually fail at something. To have your failure actually feel like a punishment followed.

Again, let me go to Vanilla WoW, please forgive me that I always use this as an example, but my other examples wouldnt qualify as casual, and I want to keep it casual:

Enemy Mobs could kill you if you were not careful. If you just rushed into a situation without thinking, you die. You couldnt take on more than 1 or 2 mobs alone, which actually meant you had to ask for help some times. When you died, you actually had to run back to your corpse from a graveyard, giving your death some consequences. Compare that to ESO where, even if you somehow manage to get yourself killed, even if I really dont see how you could do that unless you really pull like 20 mobs and then dont do anything, you just hop right back up, no problem. But because dying actually meant something in Vanilla WoW, you started to actually learn your limits.

Another example is that you cant really not win in this game. Again, back in WoW, when you had an NPC to protect, this NPS could actually die. Mobs that spawned actually tried to attack the NPC and you had to defend him, taunt mobs away, burst them down, heal the NPC... see what happened here? You actually had to use the abilities of your role. As a tank, you had to use your taunts, hold Aggro, stop the enemy from attacking the NPC. As a DPS, you had to do enough damage to kill the mobs fast. And as a healer, you had to combine your healing and your damage in a way that you could keep the NPC alive while still getting rid of the mobs. You learned your class and ressource management. That way the Challenge of failure actually taught you the game.

Hippie4927 · June 2019

Craglorn Anomalies have that 'fail' factor. You have to protect that priest [or whatever he/she is] or you fail and have to wait for the Anomaly to respawn.

It would be fun to have a different outcome for a quest if you fail to protect the NPC.

mann9753b16_ESO · June 2019

I kinda miss games that dared to make me repeat quests when I screwed up...

Imperial_Voice wrote: »

This poll is one of the most biased Ive seen in a long time. The only way it could be worse is if it said "Yes I agree with OP" or "No I am a waste of a human being"

No, it says exactly what I want to say.

Do you want a game with risk of failure, where success has to be worked for, or do you want a game without risk, where success is just handed to you.

I am sorry when you are offended by that, but this is what is happening to games, success is just given for free.

Browiseth · June 2019

No, I really dont want a risk in my games, I just want easy success.

mann9753b16_ESO wrote: »

Browiseth wrote: »

i need you to define what "challenge" is to you for me, please. You mentioned dark souls, but dark souls...it really isn't that hard. it has a learning curve, just like ESO, but it's not the most challenging game ever. i would honestly argue ESO is harder to master than any souls game.

you aren't entirely wrong that games have become "easier" as of recent, but how much of that is improved game design to make games more intuitive to play? lots of "hard" games in the past were designed poorly, and that was where the challenge came from.

your post lacks a lot of nuance to address just how complex game design can be.

I thought I did this in my post, but I am more than happy to try to explain it better.

The Challenge I am talking about is simply the risk to actually fail at something. To have your failure actually feel like a punishment followed.

Again, let me go to Vanilla WoW, please forgive me that I always use this as an example, but my other examples wouldnt qualify as casual, and I want to keep it casual:

Enemy Mobs could kill you if you were not careful. If you just rushed into a situation without thinking, you die. You couldnt take on more than 1 or 2 mobs alone, which actually meant you had to ask for help some times. When you died, you actually had to run back to your corpse from a graveyard, giving your death some consequences. Compare that to ESO where, even if you somehow manage to get yourself killed, even if I really dont see how you could do that unless you really pull like 20 mobs and then dont do anything, you just hop right back up, no problem. But because dying actually meant something in Vanilla WoW, you started to actually learn your limits.

Another example is that you cant really not win in this game. Again, back in WoW, when you had an NPC to protect, this NPS could actually die. Mobs that spawned actually tried to attack the NPC and you had to defend him, taunt mobs away, burst them down, heal the NPC... see what happened here? You actually had to use the abilities of your role. As a tank, you had to use your taunts, hold Aggro, stop the enemy from attacking the NPC. As a DPS, you had to do enough damage to kill the mobs fast. And as a healer, you had to combine your healing and your damage in a way that you could keep the NPC alive while still getting rid of the mobs. You learned your class and ressource management. That way the Challenge of failure actually taught you the game.

the issue is that ESO's overland content is easy by design. it's the "sandbox", the "playground" for everyone to mess around in or play with their friends. I'm currently helping a friend of mine level her first character, and i can guarantee you if ESO's "casual" content had this challenge you desire, we wouldn't be having a good time.

I hope they keep things the way they are. it makes leveling characters with your friends a nice and easy social experience.

ArchMikem · June 2019

No, I really dont want a risk in my games, I just want easy success.

I'm not ashamed to admit it. Video Games are relaxing entertainment. Ones with stories are my books. I don't play a game to overcome a challenge or earn a rare achievement. I'm here to experience a world, not bash my head against it until one of us says uncle.

I have also noticed quests where your companion was immortal, and i could just stand aside and watch two NPCs wail on each other with unmoving health bars. But i look past that stuff.

mann9753b16_ESO · June 2019

I kinda miss games that dared to make me repeat quests when I screwed up...

ArchMikem wrote: »

I'm not ashamed to admit it. Video Games are relaxing entertainment. Ones with stories are my books. I don't play a game to overcome a challenge or earn a rare achievement. I'm here to experience a world, not bash my head against it until one of us says uncle.

I have to give you some big respect for that.

You like it and you admit it, that makes you a respectable person. You dont try to hide or claim "Its not that easy".

Good for you, an I wish you lots of fun

AlnilamE · June 2019

mann9753b16_ESO wrote: »

But now? Well, lets see it that way, how many player reach level 50, 160CP, playing tank/Heal/DPS all game long, but once they get to DLC Dungeons they notice they have no idea how to actually tank/heal/DPS right? And why? Because they never had to learn it. THe game until now handed them everything for free, with a great "YOU ARE AWESOME!" card attached to it. Is that really the way to make games now?

If that is your premise, it is wrong. The only way the game can teach you to tank/heal/DPS via base game questing is if you force grouping for those activities. If you are not in a group, formal or otherwise, there is no tank/heal/DPS and there is no way the game can teach out to perform those roles while you are questing solo.

That said, I'm not opposed to failing, although I'd rather plan well enough that I won't.

And as you said, people do group content (vet or otherwise) to get challenged.

To me, questing is my "chill and enjoy the story" time.

Also, can you put out an unbiased poll next time?

Zacuel · June 2019

There's still vma.

And if you answer is "I can do vma blindfolded upside down" maybe you're wasting your time here.

Narvuntien · June 2019

No, I really dont want a risk in my games, I just want easy success.

Bias Poll is Bias

I think it should be optional, sometimes you just want to play your character and do your thing and sometimes you want a challenge, where you have to learn what you are doing wrong and improve.

And there is plenty of places in this game where you will fail and fail often, the most obvious being Maestrom but all the hard content will have you retrying stuff.

Pennylong · June 2019

I kinda miss games that dared to make me repeat quests when I screwed up...

I personally think that somewhere along the line the marketing types in these gaming companies decided that harder games meant people would give up and be in game less so less chance of them spending more money on micro-transactions.

I think a lot of it is pandering to ego as well to a degree to achieve this goal, I expect very few would play a game where they constantly lose. I'd say most want to feel competent and by pandering to this aspect people play longer, stay in game longer and are more likely to drop money on that new mount or armour set.

The few MMOs I play feel like they are becoming more event driven by the day and they events just get easier and easier. The last one here was literally a piece of cake, then you have daily log in rewards and limited time bonuses all under of the umbrella of if you don't play you miss out, maybe forever.

So for me there is a reason why they simplify and remove the challenge from these games, it's all about opening up the demographics and increasing sales.

jainiadral · June 2019

No, I really dont want a risk in my games, I just want easy success.

Your poll is extremely biased. That said, no, I don't enjoy slogs when a game has mediocre (or worse) combat. Most MMO combat isn't exactly fun. And MMOs constantly stick you with penalties for dying which makes me hate croaking with the passion of 1000 burning suns. It's a lot more fun to challenge yourself in single-player games with save points, etc., and no punishment for death.

mann9753b16_ESO · June 2019

I kinda miss games that dared to make me repeat quests when I screwed up...

jainiadral wrote: »

Your poll is extremely biased. That said, no, I don't enjoy slogs when a game has mediocre (or worse) combat. Most MMO combat isn't exactly fun. And MMOs constantly stick you with penalties for dying which makes me hate croaking with the passion of 1000 burning suns. It's a lot more fun to challenge yourself in single-player games with save points, etc., and no punishment for death.

How is it bias? The question is easy, do you want risk and challenge, where you have to work for success, or do you want no risk and success just handed to you?

These are the options, and honestly, most of you people accusing me of bias just dont like to admit that they love easy games.

Let me tell you: There is no shame in liking easy games, where just participating gives you the "You win" screen. But there is shame in liking these games and still acting like they are not what they are.

Tandor · June 2019

mann9753b16_ESO wrote: »

Tasear wrote: »

There's some quests that are um fun. Like spent 2 days on this shealth quests. I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong. I even googled it. Turns out need to use cat as distraction go figure.

It wasn't hard and clearly most people got it right away, but it was rewarding experience.

I think I know the quest you mean, and you actually offered me another great example here.

We are talking about the Story Quest in Eastmarch here, where you have to get the Wine for Naryu, right?

Why is that a good example? Because she actually TELLS you to get a cat first, but most people wont bother to read or listen to her, because... why? Most quests in this game dont requier any setup, any thinking, any actuall effort, just go there, kill/take stuff, go back.

I often encountered players who were actually overwhelmed the second the game doesnt exactly tells them what to do.

Theres a Quest in Shadowfen, where you have to read 3 Books and use whats written in them to match 3 Items to 3 Chests, and later to read a poem and find out which out of 5 pages is the one missing from the poem...

Both are really easy when you just sit down and read the texts, but ive seen most players either randomly trying stuff or being totaly overwhelmed and asking for the answer.

I don't think that's down to people ignoring the prompts when they matter because they matter so rarely that they have got used to not bothering. I think it's more down to some people wanting in effect to complete the game without actually playing it. Games generally have become totally dumbed down because of this, and guess what? Now we can even buy skill points for alts in the cash shop!

As for the poll, it's too biased and simplistic for me to be able to vote. My characters have died enough times in 5 years to know that the challenge level is about right for me, and whilst group dungeons and trials should pose a huge challenge (the adequacy of which I'm not qualified to judge as I don't do them), overland questing should offer just enough difficulty to provide a reasonable challenge without it getting in the way of the quests - and I think ZOS have struck a good balance here for those playing through the content a few times but clearly not for those who would be considered veteran or even elite players and for whom the dungeons and trials are primarily intended.I understand the problems those players have with new quest content in DLCs and Chapters being trivial for them and it's something that could usefully be addressed.

Carl-lan · June 2019

No, I really dont want a risk in my games, I just want easy success.

I like smashing mobs easily with my sword. It makes me feel powerful and heroic, because I can do it with such ease. In real life, I’m nothing of the sort. But I must admit, I can run quite fast when it matters.

Kiralyn2000 · June 2019

mann9753b16_ESO wrote: »

jainiadral wrote: »

Your poll is extremely biased. That said, no, I don't enjoy slogs when a game has mediocre (or worse) combat. Most MMO combat isn't exactly fun. And MMOs constantly stick you with penalties for dying which makes me hate croaking with the passion of 1000 burning suns. It's a lot more fun to challenge yourself in single-player games with save points, etc., and no punishment for death.

How is it bias? The question is easy, do you want risk and challenge, where you have to work for success, or do you want no risk and success just handed to you?

Because of the extra qualifiers you've put on the two choices, they don't cover 100% of the spread. And they only accept your meaning for either choice.

(In this case, I don't want to pick either option. 1. I play plenty of games that have risk/death/repeat these days, so I don't 'miss' it; and 2. I'm not a "challenge" gamer who's into the whole "throw myself against the cliff until I conquer it" scene; but I don't "just want easy success". In the case of ESO, I'm fine with the overworld difficulty, and I don't find quests & dungeons to be "too easy". I can't solo most world bosses, and even then only on certain characters. And I've never solo'd a dungeon - I just barely made it through a Craglorn group delve on my Magplar.)

Hallothiel · June 2019

What do you mean by ‘challenging’? Hard to work out or hard to kill?

Personally I like a bit of a challenge, nothing too easy, but agree with @Archmikem in how I play this game generally.

I would love it if there were harder puzzles or similar - where the solution was to pay attention to your surroundings & not just rush through killing everything - but I can already hear the howls of complaining this would create!

RavenSworn · June 2019

Thanks for the poll, it's exactly why alot of these polls and threads come up.

Overland, questing by nature is easy in this mmo. It's OK if the questing or the mobs gets a slight buff, don't really see the issue here. It adds to the 'adventure' and an adventure is not an adventure when it's just smooth sailing.

Alot of players are used to being given constant gratification, which is why right now games pump out so many lights and fizzles just to attract them, rather than the suitable rpg element of delayed gratification.

rfennell_ESO · June 2019

mann9753b16_ESO wrote: »

Do you miss the time when games dared to let players fail, or do you prefere the "no risk" method?

Overall, it was WOW that changed the game model. WOW showed that making death a non factor was the successful model for mmo's and no one has moved back from it.

Early Everquest was a punishing leveling grind with a penalty (of xp) for death. Compounding the hardcore leveling (and penalty for dying) was the fact that you "corpse" was left with your equipment on it and you were respawned at your bind location. So... on challenging (or even non challenging) content, you face the possibility of respawning naked a 30+ minute run to get back to your corpse. In Dungeons it was compounded by the fact that the deeper you were in it... the harder it was going to be to get back to your corpse. Many corpse runs in EQ required other players helping you. P.S. you could delevel from dying... matter of fact you could die so much that you no longer met the level requirements for a zone to enter it and your corpse and gear would be lost.

I don't see any MMO going back to punishing failure due to WOW's success.

mann9753b16_ESO · June 2019

I kinda miss games that dared to make me repeat quests when I screwed up...

rfennell_ESO wrote: »

mann9753b16_ESO wrote: »

Do you miss the time when games dared to let players fail, or do you prefere the "no risk" method?

Overall, it was WOW that changed the game model. WOW showed that making death a non factor was the successful model for mmo's and no one has moved back from it.

Early Everquest was a punishing leveling grind with a penalty (of xp) for death. Compounding the hardcore leveling (and penalty for dying) was the fact that you "corpse" was left with your equipment on it and you were respawned at your bind location. So... on challenging (or even non challenging) content, you face the possibility of respawning naked a 30+ minute run to get back to your corpse. In Dungeons it was compounded by the fact that the deeper you were in it... the harder it was going to be to get back to your corpse. Many corpse runs in EQ required other players helping you. P.S. you could delevel from dying... matter of fact you could die so much that you no longer met the level requirements for a zone to enter it and your corpse and gear would be lost.

I don't see any MMO going back to punishing failure due to WOW's success.

Thats why I made clear that I was only talking about casual games. Just back then, Casual didnt mean "You win by default"

Vodnek · June 2019

I kinda miss games that dared to make me repeat quests when I screwed up...

I remember the time when Sanctum Ophidia came out. Players couldn't get pass the Mantikora for months. Trying different approaches, overcoming challenges, frustration by failure... I was enjoying every aspect of it. Because it created it's own story for a time, ''The place that no group can clear.'' Now i compare it with routine runs where you can nuke it down to the oblivion and it's boring as hell.

At the end I will remember those struggles and hard earned victory when i look back not speedrun no-mechanic runs. Now we got tons of different rewards, cosmetics etc. but none of them feels unique to me anymore.

Btw; Every kind of game should contain a challenge. Easy or hard it's in them by it's nature. If it's easy enough to ignore there is no point playing it imo. Collecting, gathering, fetching even with option to buying them serves no fun or engagement at all.

Real issue is no matter how hard the content is, getting easier when you get used to it. I don't know it's a good or bad thing. Because i lose interest when it comes to the level where you can easily overcome.

rfennell_ESO · June 2019

mann9753b16_ESO wrote: »

rfennell_ESO wrote: »

mann9753b16_ESO wrote: »

Do you miss the time when games dared to let players fail, or do you prefere the "no risk" method?

Overall, it was WOW that changed the game model. WOW showed that making death a non factor was the successful model for mmo's and no one has moved back from it.

Early Everquest was a punishing leveling grind with a penalty (of xp) for death. Compounding the hardcore leveling (and penalty for dying) was the fact that you "corpse" was left with your equipment on it and you were respawned at your bind location. So... on challenging (or even non challenging) content, you face the possibility of respawning naked a 30+ minute run to get back to your corpse. In Dungeons it was compounded by the fact that the deeper you were in it... the harder it was going to be to get back to your corpse. Many corpse runs in EQ required other players helping you. P.S. you could delevel from dying... matter of fact you could die so much that you no longer met the level requirements for a zone to enter it and your corpse and gear would be lost.

I don't see any MMO going back to punishing failure due to WOW's success.

Thats why I made clear that I was only talking about casual games. Just back then, Casual didnt mean "You win by default"

WOW made it so casual was the only option.

What you miss with the casual friendly approach is a sense of accomplishment and a bit of trepidation. Personally, I do miss that a bit (even though I wouldn't remotely have the time to experience it really).

The Elder Scrolls Online

Do you miss the time when games dared to let players fail, or do you prefere the "no risk" method?

Do you miss the time when games dared to let players fail, or do you prefere the "no risk" method? 129 votes