Poll : How hard should the highest tier worlds be?

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I just thought about the endgame difficulty of several games which throws up the question how hard the game will be on the highest tier that will come into it. So here the poll for it :wink:

How hard should the highest tier worlds be?

  • Easy going: I don’t want to fear for my life but wander arround and have fun alone or with my pals, even new to the game.
  • Good to handle: They should be harder then the lower tiers, but as a skilled player I should go through them with no pain.
  • Challenging: I want to have a hard time on the highest tiers, so that even as a skilled players there are places of danger.
  • Hardcore: I want to have real hard enemies which are much more powerful then me, so that I have to fear for my life, even if playing with other skilled players together.

0 voters

Examples could be: Easy: the normal endgame areas of WoW (outside of raids or dungeons) … Medium: Daily Areas of WoW or the endgame areas of GW1&2 or Wildstar … Hard: Hardmode Areas in Guild Wars 1 or Endgame Dungeons of WoW … Hardcore: Dungeons or Raids in several games in higher difficulty settings.

I for my part loved the Hardmode of Guildwars and the thrill of hard dungeons in WoW, so I go with the last option :wink:

Now’s your time to chose (and to discuss of cause :wink: )

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I feel that Hardcore worlds would encourage team work and expansive player made cities and safe havens for player trade. Eventually, these worlds could be tamed through intense effort, but working toward that would be a lot of fun! Additionally, the harder the worlds, the greater the wealth that should be found there!

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So…what makes something “Hardcore Mode?”

Is it purely numbers? Enemies with lots of hit points and that deal extreme damage?

Or is it the environment? Dungeons with more traps, scarcer resources? Always dark so visibility drops? Extreme terrain that makes mounts useless?

Is it some kind of other handicap or accessibility gate? Toxic air that requires rare equipment to survive? Killer lightning storms? Biomes that prevent healing? Shifting fog that warps players to random locations?

What do the high-tier front lines of the Oortiverse look like?

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I also thought about having more high resources on the maxed out worlds, so may be they could add an option for the world builder to have more resource nods when making the enemies even tougher (as like a hard mode in other games). So there could be half more “Mat X” on those worlds, but the enemies have double hp and do 50% more damage (just as an example). So there could be “just hard” max tier worlds but also “hardcore” ones for those who want to feel real pain… May be there could also be no end in max difficulty, so that the worlds can be so hard, that nearly Noone gets to set foot there :wink:

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Of cause it could also be handled with other hard circumstances like a toxic auf that reduces healing or fires the hunger and thirst, or there can be more “environmental traps” or lower stuff like food or constant damage by acid rain or heat storms that come time to time. There can be much of such stuff if the devs let it come to reality.

Only having tougher enemies and no other hindrances could become boring over long time :wink:

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Exactly my point. :wink: If it just becomes a game of numbers, that becomes far less interesting to me.

It should feel like the front lines. The higher tiers should introduce new elements that change the equations; that make you play differently than you have been.

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I used to raid in WoW, and what made the bosses so challenging was not the amount of health or how hard they hit, but rather the mechanics of the fight. Some examples being:

  1. A wave of lava that only had one safe point to escape it and everyone had to stop fighting and run to it.
  2. Dodging flying boulders, but then having to hit behind them to avoid frost.
  3. Being unable to stand still or stand in a spot for more than a few seconds at a time.

These types of boss fight “events” are what made them so challenging. It was more about team coordination then just hack and slash.

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I too hope for harder monsters than just high stats. Some basic mechanics to learn to kill even common creatures at the highest tier worlds would be exciting and challenging! I do hope they can find a good balance between “Hardcore” and simple though. I don’t want it to be so punishing that it is prohibitive to less experienced players.

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I just think about Guild Wars (1), where each monster (even the “mobs” (I hate this word ^^)) had at least 4 skills, much more had 5-7 different ones. And thos skills were as effective as those of the players and the AI used them well. Also, the mobs most times came in teams with a mix of melee, ranged, aoe and healing specialists, so each fight felt like a small pvp duel. Of cause the last thing, the mobs in teams, can be complicated in a game where you also can go out solo, but I think even the smallest “mob” should habe three or more skills that are effecting it’s methods and difficulties in battle.

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please do keep in mind how small a team this is, and that its not going to be tab target combat like GW. making it harder to make good skills

for the post, i considered making one about Elite worlds, but it fits well here so i will just post it here.

I think we should have a certain amount of tiers and they should get better stats and different formations (at first tiers enemies stand alone, but as you get higher up they start to stand in groups or clusters with a few melee and a few ranged) the higher you go, so lets assume there are 10 tiers. every tier you go up the enemies becomes a bit harder but they can still be done with solo players, as when you hit max you are so to say ‘‘max level’’ and you have the ‘‘max level’’ gear, however you dont need the best gear to be on tier 10 worlds, a normal decent player with high level gear can survive, not mindlessly, but he can survive.

then they should add 10+ and 10++ worlds, only a few, 10+ would be twice or thrice as hard as the tier 10 world, everything hurts alot. you would need a group of 4 or 5 people working together with higher than normal gear just to take down normal creatures. there would be something like +materials on world.

tier 10++ would be something like a world where there are no normal creatures, all creatures would be buffed boss creatures from the previous worlds, mearning that if you have an area with 50 wolves, its 50 wolf bosses gathering around. this world would require 10 - 15 people with insane gear and teamwork to just get around without dying, maybe also a harder death penalty. this world might only be accessed once every day, and if you die you get thrown out of it. this would have ++materials that would make the absolute best gear in the game.

there is a gaming quote saying ‘‘never underestimate gamers to beat what the devs think is unbeatable’’ this is for the truly truly hardcore players, and might just be 1 or 2 worlds.

so again for the question.

‘‘max’’ world (tier 10) should not be easy, but it should be soloable with highlevel gear. and then there would be + world and a ++ world for the truly hardcore gamers.

EDIT: for those who are going to ask ‘‘why not just call that tier 11 and tier 12 worlds’’ its for the endgame.

everybody who have played mmo’s know what endgame is, its the point when you reach max level and you start to do dungeons and raids. now. if we say tier 10 is max and then we have harder tier 10 worlds, the + and ++ people will accept tier 10 as max and see the + and ++ as endgame content. if we call it tier 11 and tier 12, people would only see tier 12 as '‘end game’ and they would say it was impossible to get there.

it would be like playing wow, getting to level 80 and then not being able to level in any zone other than level 60.

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I didn’t know there was going to be a difficulty level in worlds. Is that confirmed somewhere?

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@endymion:
https://forum.oortonline.com/t/design-about-the-oort-online-gameplay-loop/250

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Jep, a bit like I mentioned in my first answer above (but you took the thought more into depth :wink: ). I remember that James once said that there could be a system which decides if a world is acceptable to be connected to the main game or not (looking at ressource distribution and other parameters). May be that they could some stuff to chose from a list so that the worlds are allowed to have more rare stuff and drops.

Those options would be even tougher enemies, constant debuffs for players, environmental hazards or circumstances, lesser distribution of food or other vital stuff, …

As more negative points you chose, as more you can invest in drop and distribution rates :wink:

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i dont think you can make the worlds that hardcore with that many options.

but yeah there needs to be a risk vs reward system, harder worlds = better rewards.

i would imagine for the private worlds you would sort of pick a tier that the given world should be, and then if it is an official world you can only use the materials for the world which would be in the given tier, which would also decide what difficulty mobs would be in the world :smile:

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I think tier wise having a difficult endgame is always a good thing, however I don’t really support the idea of tiers for this game, at least as far as crafting goes. I want the player who doesn’t build anything and who only fights to still be sort of required to make use of basic materials, otherwise eventually there will be an item that gets no love in about 4 years.

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I’m sorry. can you try to explain the last part again?

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Basically I want all materials to continue to be relevant unlike some games where the items you need for high level stuff never use any low level materials and thus you never try to use the noob stuff again. Think Starbound: What? Iron? I have Impervium, iron is useless.

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yeah that is a big problem, but they are also aware of it.

higher tiers = better mats, that makes sense, thats how it should be, better weapons and armor, but for things like building blocks, furniture etc there you might need mixed tiers. so for example a chair can only be made with wood from a tier 1 world, same with lanterns, and kinda like that. might also be tied a bit into color? so using wood from a tier world will make an item look different than from a tier 10 world, it wont be better, and in that case wood from lower levels worlds would still be needed.

also something like wearables in terms of style, i know that for a tux set in wow people tried to find a gray pair of gloves that only dropped from a certian cave, because they looked really cool with a tux.

but yes. that is going to be one of the biggest problems, keeping lower tier worlds relevant. with that in mind i made this some time ago

https://forum.oortonline.com/t/stats-from-equipment-passives-only/907

basically if you have used a sword and become a master, and want to learn how to use a bow you would have to go level it up as if you just started, hence keeping all tiers of worlds relevant.

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Having stuff of all tiers relevant for game play sounds good and reasonable, but high equipped characters should not be to overpowered then when traveling there. That would end in strong people roaming while lower ones feel way to weak compared to them. But if this is done well I would love to have stuff from many different worlds needed for the full crafting repertoire :wink:

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I suggested having a hardcounter on stats for every tier. meaning that if the average intellect for the area is 50 then you cant have more than 80, while your gear might have 403 int, you would be capped at 80.

ofc given that you will most likely have all of those stats capped when you go to the low level worlds + how many skills you have you will still be stronger than those there, but not 1 shot faceroll strong.

but this would tie into what stats we actually have in the game which i talked about here.

https://forum.oortonline.com/t/stats-for-oort-online/184

But its kinda for and against, because some want to have a challenge when going back to previous world and to not be able to just faceroll, while others want to get revenge for getting killed on that tier and prove that they got stronger. so i see both sides of that argument.