Fed up! Raiding sucks as a sole form of end game content.
I love MUDs, MMOs, virtual worlds, (insert your favorite term). I love making them. I love playing them. I love talking about them. I hate raiding. I hate the current obsessive focus on a MUD’s “end game.” There shouldn’t be an end game. The draw of open ended, online multiplayer worlds is that they don’t end. But the constant dumbing down of MMOs is such that people expect to be able to race to level cap and then participate in the “real game.” I’m going to put aside the fact that I find this absurd, and focus on the current popular form of “end game”: raiding. Oh, and I intend to utterly savage the concept of raiding as currently implemented in MMOs.-
Ok… I lied a little.
Alright, I lied a little. I don’t hate raiding. Sometimes it can be fun. What I hate is the way raiding is currently implemented in MUDs (graphical or text), and the fact that raiding is generally the ONLY serious end game MMOs offer. (Yes, I am using MUD and MMO interchangeably. See my Gaming Terminology page. This is my subtle ruse to get people used to the term MUD and use it instead of MMO.)
I know a lot of you out there love raiding, or at least claim to love it. I know there are things about it that are enjoyable: the shared experience, the challenge of figuring bosses out, the sense of accomplishment when you beat a boss or finish a dungeon. But raiding, as currently implemented on most MUDs (like WoW) is horribly flawed, and does not even do a good job of maximizing the positive elements people claim to enjoy.
Raiding as a Concept is Horribly Designed.
1) I play games to PLAY THE ACTUAL GAME. I don’t play games to load up a web site and read a step by step strategy for how to defeat a boss. Sure, you don’t have to use raid walkthroughs, but you have to be masochistic not to. Raid encounters are generally designed to require an extremely specific set of maneuvers in order to defeat them. Bob has to stand on point A and hit 1, 2, 3 in succession. Joe has to stand on point B and hit 1, 2, 3 within 2 seconds of Bob hitting his 1, 2, 3. Cindy has to stand EXACTLY behind Bob, face backwards, kneel, alternate between the Macarena emote and a focus change macro, and press the 1 button exactly every 10 seconds. Frank, the raid leader, has to constantly bark commands over Teamspeak/Ventrilo to make sure nobody get distracted from the raid and does something foolish like trim their nails for some excitement.
Raid encounters feel like crappy community theater to me, not epic game play. I feel like an extra in a low budget Hollywood fantasy movie where the producers are only making the movie for the tax write-off and don’t care about how illogical the directions are. Uwe Bol ’s action scenes make more sense than even the best raid encounters on WoW and most other modern MMOs.
2) An hour of killing trash for the “reward” of a 10 minute, scripted boss battle is like suffering through a root canal for the reward of a prostate exam. Oh, and if something goes wrong in that boss battle, you very well might be clearing that same hour of trash to take another shot at it. Why they make the trash mobs so pointless and worthless is beyond me. You have a capitive audience of 10, 25, 40, 50, or 100 players and you make them spend an hour each (25 man hours of trash killing for a standard WoW raid) doing something that is DESIGNED to be a pure, boring time sink. That’s good game design? That makes sense to ANYONE? How about we swap that? I’d rather feel uber clearing pansy minions for 10 minutes and then fight the boss for an hour. I’d find that a lot more epic, frankly.
3) There is no room for error or improvisation. Everything has to be done in a completely orchestrated way, and for the most part nobody can screw up. If someone makes a mistake, it is generally a wipe for the whole group. If someone pulls aggro that shouldn’t, it is almost always a wipe. If someone attacks the wrong thing or in the wrong order, wipe. If someone kinda spaces out for a minute and lets off on DPS or healing, wipe. I am fine with games punishment bad execution or inattentive play, but the problem is it only takes a very small mistake on the part of one person to cause the other 9, 24, 39, 49, or 99 a lot of pain, suffering, misery, and wasted time clearing trash. And with each person’s role so incredibly explicit, there is rarely the possibility of someone else picking up the slack. If Bob sees Joe is slacking off, what can he do? He can’t pour on more DPS, because he is already expected to be at maximum DPS. If Cam the Tank loses aggro to a crazy DPSer, there’s nothing he can do. He can’t be a hero, because he is already operating at maximum threat and most likely the boss is immune to any snap aggro taunts anyway (another gripe, but I digress). If Cindy the healer isn’t healing enough, Kalli the healer can’t make up for it, because she’s already healing at max efficiency and even if she could heal more she’d either run out of mana or pull aggro.
4) So may elements of boss encounter design are absurdly arbitrary. I have fought bosses who did incredibly ridiculous things that were clearly designed solely with the idea of nullifying a specific class, tactic, or ability for no logical reason other than the devs thought it would be funny. I have fought raid bosses that were immune to all sorts of standard abilities for no apparent reason other than to make you feel impotent. I have participated in raid encounters where mages had to tank a boss… just because. People don’t make mages because they like tanking, folks. They make mages because they like to make things go boom. I have fought bosses where they you have to interrupt some of their spells, but not all of them, because being too good at interrupting their spells triggers some kind of Uber Spell. If the boss possessed the ability to perform this Uber Spell, why isn’t he just doing it all the time? Why punish people for being GOOD at a core mechanic (interrupting spell casting) with this arbitrary result? I have fought bosses who cast spells that require NOBODY in the entire raid move a single pixel, and then randomly follow it up with an attack that makes people stagger around against their will. And this boss in particular gets us back to #3. If one member of the raid accidentally hits their D button (move right), the raid wipes. That’s good design? The tiniest little finger twitch by one person and everyone dies and starts over? Huh?
5) Loot. Hopefully soon I am going to write an entire post about how stupid I think current loot systems are in games, but I’ll hit this one briefly now. So 10, 25, 40, 50, or 100 people work together to mindlessly clear trash, follow their little script of brain disconnected button pushes to beat the boss, and now he drops 2 or 3 pieces of loot. This loot will often be useful/needed by multiple players present, so someone loses out. The same item might drop many times in a row, resulting in certain classes feasting while others enjoy famine. Or sometimes loot will drop that nobody can use, and it just gets blown up or sold to an NPC Vendor. NEVER is the entire group happy with the loot that drops or the way the loot gets distributed. There are always people unhappy with what happens at REWARD TIME. This is BROKEN. At the moment of ultimate success, there should be happiness all around. Not happiness for 10% or less of the participants. I have a variety of suggestions for improving this, but I’ll save those for the previously mentioned LOOT post I intend to make.
6) Raid encounters have very strict requirements for the classes you need and the numbers you need. This results in a lot of friends and guildmates getting left out on a regular basis. It results in arguments and hurt feelings about who gets “rostered” to go on the raid. There are arguments about who will get rostered to kill bosses 1, 2, and 3 but not bosses 4, 5, and 6. Sometimes a player will only want/need loot from boss 4, 5, or 6 and thus will not want to even go on raids planned to kill boss 1, 2, or 3. But you have to cajole such people into joining because you need their class. The amount of heartache involved in creating rosters for who gets to raid is absolute misery. You are lucky if half the people are happy with the system you use, and at some point everyone is likely to be very pissed off by a roster decision. Since raid dungeons have lockouts and reset times, you can’t simply run the same raid 2 or 3 nights in a row so everyone gets a shot.
I could continue, and I probably will in the future. But I think I’ve made a pretty clear case for how incredibly flawed at the core modern MMO raiding is. The worst thing about this is the fact that far too many MMOs have pretty much hatched their cart to the concept of raiding and that’s all you get for end game content. If you agree with any of the above points, most MMO developers pretty much don’t care about you. Your desire for more varied and interesting gameplay will be completely ignored and discarded. They will tell you “join a raid guild” or “roll an alt.” That attitude is ridiculous, absurd, and terrible for the industry as a whole.
“I have participated in raid encounters where mages had to tank a boss… just because. People don’t make mages because they like tanking, folks. They make mages because they like to make things go boom.”
Reminds me of a certain boss in 25 mans Naxx in WoW where I (as a holy priest) have to tank the boss. Soooo stupid. Have always played the role as healer and now everything depends on me being a tank – and no other way to practice my new role than for all raid to wipe and wipe again.
And its not gonna stop, all these new “fun” things that Blizzard has come up with. Fighting on dragons not using your chars abilities at all, driving vehicles in next wave of endgame instances etc. etc.
Im a healer, I want to heal and crowd control. Thats the reason why I chose this char!
The issue with PVE raiding in MMOs really reflects a far deeper problem with their overall design; a desire to avoid at all costs the need for real challenge or skill. Pretty much anyone given enough time can run a character through a pre-determined series of simple moves. This is memorization, not skill.
If the encounters were dynamic OTOH, requiring players to make real tactical decisions….a good amount of the playerbase would never be able to complete them. This won’t work in a game with “mass casual” appeal like WOW, especially when the players for the most part don’t really want to think in the first place.
And I think MUDs including Threshold differ a good deal from MMOs here. The boss fights I remember were way more dynamic and required players to think on their feet – the skill requirement was high enough that getting to max level wasn’t just a matter of mindless grinding, unskilled players often lost more resources/xp then they gained.
So basically, in order to have real PVE endgame content MMOs need to embrace player skill again. Not necessarily twitch gaming but reactive tactics like many muds used. This would also help a good deal with required classes and the like, and mistake since there wouldn’t be as strict an artificial cap on how “well” a player can do in the fight.
Real tactical decisions… that’s what I want. That’s why I end up playing mostly PvP games, even though I do actually enjoy PvE.
I don’t want to memorize a boss battle and just follow a script by rote. I want people to need to adjust and figure things out on the fly.
I also want it to be possible for a couple of really good players to carry a few weaker ones.
Mmm… tactics. That’s why I’ve been binging on FFTA2 again lately. It’s not rocket science, but it’s a better brain workout than WoW.
Really, I agree with a lot of what’s already been said. WoW’s brand of raiding is very scripted. Especially the leading edge of content. To a degree, a few very skilled players -can- carry lesser skilled/geared players. But even in encounters where that is possible, I don’t feel ‘proud’ or ‘rewarded’ for doing so… I find myself bummed that so-and-so is still under-performing. I worry about the next encounter where it will be even harder to see or get through with less than excellent players in every raid slot.
The reason that raiding is fundamentally flawed (in current uber-popular incarnations) is not that so much that it races through so much of great/old content (though that is not a good design principle either), but rather that it squashes or restricts the enjoyment of games with friends. I’ve been a gamer for a long while, and I have the most fun with friends. People I get along with, share my sense of humor, people I care about. I have significantly less fun when to ‘advance’ my own character, I sometimes must abandon those friends and find better button-mashers, or min-max’rs…
Also, the advancement of a character based solely upon new and better gear until the end of time is so one dimensional I can’t help but feel it causes ADD (no not literally). I am an MMO and MUD person. I love many of the people I play with. I feel much more attached and proud of characters in MUDs. Largely, I think because building them up took both mechanical/leveling/grind skills as well as wit, charm, persuasive and political skill. Sure there is a degree of networking in MMOs. Getting into a ‘good guild’ building a reputation as a solid reliable player and performer. But that’s still just extensions of the mechanical dimension of gaming.
Someday an MMO will come that engages, rewards and empowers all those dimensions. And when it does… MUD players who find it will flock to having a fun, engaging and immersion rich graphical world.
Well said, Seberis.
I do not want to say it again, I share similar sentiments and I do not like the direction MMO design is heading to in general.
Interestingly, my notions are usually shared by 25+ aged MMO players who know the “standard drill” already and loathe the x-th iteration of the DIKU MUD design scheme.
I sometimes think that the loads of new and younger players are more important to game companies. Also target groups of players that did not play MMOs so far.
But I think I am not alone, being part of a generation that has grown up with the genre. There must be a market for veteran MMO gamers, come on! I guess they are a hard to please and even harder to elate crowd.
Hey!
Having read through your article, I find that I would tend to agree with most (if not all) of the points that you have raised here – and I have most definitely experienced these things in a lot of the MMOs I have devoted disproportionate chunks of my free time to… ^_^
However, while you have raised some very valid points, it is a shame that you don’t really appear to have offered any particular solutions to these.
Don’t misunderstand me; this is by no means a criticism of course – in retrospect I would be very interested to hear / read any practical solutions that you may be able to suggest that you feel would serve to counteract the problems you have pointed out.
I am always eager to see how other developers would create things such as this.
(If you have the time, of course!
)
My solution is for companies to put less focus on raiding as the sole form of end game content.
If you read through more articles, you will see that I suggest things like mini games, alternate forms of character development, robust respec systems (tweaking is a very engaging form of content), etc.
Please read through and enjoy. Welcome!
I have been playing WoW for several years and although i have been raiding for half that time, i havent gotten bored of it. The ONLY reason i havent gotten bored of it is the people i play with, ive been raiding with 5-6 different “core raiders” and bringing in other guild members who have not completed the raid and so we always have the threat of wiping and making things a little more exciting.
However that said, i despise pvp. I have never liked doing it and would rather do something else than get abused by a person i have never even seen online before.
Back onto raiding though, progression is really the main reason i raid and love to do so. Taking down two-3 bosses in the opening of an instance after completing a lolly run of the raid beforehand brings me and my raiders down to earth and makes us try harder and gives us more and more incentive to finish what we can for ANY gear that drops.
I can see the point about “join a raiding guild and build up your gear”, but i seem to be spoilt in my guildies where we enjoy seeing other guildies get the gear we were hoping for.
Thats just my two cents and my specific situation.
“Real tactical decisions… that’s what I want.”
If Stargate Worlds doesn’t go under (I’m pretty sure it has, their community page last had a post in May of this year D:) then it might give you some semblance of what you’re looking for. Selecting the best cover to fire from seems to me to be infinitely more exciting than sitting back and clicking #2 key and the occasional #1 key, which is currently what I do in WoW when I raid with my Mage. We should all start praying now because it looks like it’ll take an act of God to get SG:Worlds off the ground, and it just might be fresh enough to move MMOs in the right direction.
SGW recently acquired some “angel” funding that should let them finish the game. I’m really hoping they pull off even half of what they had in mind.
Fantastic! Now here’s hoping that it wont just be Tabula Rasa Act 2.
Tabula Rasa, act 2. LOL.
That was actually a pretty decent game in the end.
I blogged about the Tabula Rasa shutdown in case you missed it. I am still shocked there have never been any private server projects for the game.
Yes, I did read that post and it saddens me still that no private servers have popped up after its demise. That’s actually what I meant when I said I didn’t want Stargate Worlds to become Tabula Rasa Act 2. I’m hoping that the angel funding doesn’t help them finish the game only to have it taken offline right after launch.
I loath WoW raiding.
It seems just about all of WoW’s systems are generated by time sinking elitists, for elitists.
Everything WoW devs do, seems to enforce a mentality of lording something over someone else.
The loot system is a lazy one. An antiquated system, of providing just enough loot, to keep the sheep coming back every week. To make the most out of minimum content.
And for what?
To have it all become obsolete in a matter of months?
I have no idea why, right now, people are fighting so hard for Icecrown stuff, when it all becomes garbage in a month or two.
I quit, because all WoW was for me was:
DailiesDailiesDailiesRaidDailiesRaidDailiesDailiesRaid
It certainly didn’t help that Raids are like Michael Bay directed square dances.
Players use pretty words like “progression”.
However, what it really is, is pushing a giant stone wheel slowly up an infinitely tall mountain.
Or a piece of cheese, at the end of an ever expanding maze.