Lithose
Buzzfeed Editor
- 25,946
- 113,035
That's all fair. Like I said, I don't think CR's in and of themselves were a great mechanic--I think they had a lot of benefits AS a layered consequence that most people glossed over. If we really examine why CR's, in some cases, were good; it's possible to see why sometimes punishing the player in an "intrinsic" way in regards to his risk? Feels "fairer" to the player than simply having an arbitrary "SIT IN THE CORNER!" feel. Now, EQ's death penalties had both, which is why I said CRs are still a bad mechanic.
BUT some of the mechanics of the CR? Certainly did have an intrinsic feel to them. You set your camp up in a bad area, your punishment got harder--you wanted to farm in a place that had higher rewards because no one went there? Your risk grew. These are all some small, and in my opinion, kind of cool "adaptable" punishments--they directly correlate to the players risk. And I think that's really missing in the modern MMO where the player doesn't get a choice about his risk; it's all binary. If I run naked up to Garrosh and spit on him--despite being in the "scariest" place in that expansion? My punishment for not even preparing with gear or a team of players, is the EXACT same as someone in a noobie dungeon.
Garrosh is no more "risky" to face down than the Defias bortherhood was almost a decade ago. Does that feel like it has some fidelity to the world? Meh. There's something to be said about making consequence feel genuinely different as you get into the more rewarding parts of the game. It feels real, it "feels" like it follows the aesthetic of living in a world with rational rules. Now, don't get me wrong, Garrosh is much harder than the low level dungeon--but that's the thing; the only way WoW developers have to distinguish Garrosh from Defias Noob 01 is by increasing the APM repetitions needed to kill him. And yeah, I bet he's hard, LK heroic was hard for us...BUT this single "curve" for difficulty is why modern fights are getting SO complex in WoW that they are essentially forcing even decent players into the "derp switch" crowd--because the developers literally don't have another lever to pull, the only way they can distinguish the new baddie and his "ultimate bad assness" from the lower level baddies is by making him do a lot more stuff in the encounter.
However, if you played Xcom, then you got a feel for what it's like when a developer has more than one lever to pull. The next encounter doesn't have to be exponentially more difficult to make it "harder"--it can just carry more risk, or carry more strategic risk in the larger game. For example...at the beginning, you might be able to lose your best guy and be OKAY--toward the middle, now losing your best guy is a crippling hit to your strategy. The mission difficulty might be the same, but the acceptable "loss" for your strategy? Is no longer acceptable, so the mission got harder WITHOUT actually getting harder and without even you losing (You still can recover, but it's more taxing..You'll need to adapt and get better because you can't do this recovery every time)....that's the power of risk/punishment that's not binary
But yeah, I don't think CR's are a good mechanic. I also think WoW is harder on a tactical level. But there is something to be said of a game that gives you choices and then provides consequence. EQ stumbled a little onto that--they didn't do it well, but it was there, buried under the crappy balance and mechanics. WoW, I feel, kind of lost it--but I wish someone would go back, and iterate on those concepts and make a game about choice, consequence and strategy that could fit into a modern game without the bad aspects EQ had in it.
it's not about Garrosh's difficulty, it's about the TYPE of difficulty WoW uses exclusively. The post was stating the only difficulty meter WoW has is increasing the APM repetition; and yes, that makes Garroshharder, but it's also causing problems becauseeverydifficulty design has to go into making itmoredifficult for players to recreate patterns to solve the problem. (I went over why this is a problem in previous posts)
