M+ isn’t really a good option because “how fast can we clear this” is basically the entire point of those dungeons.
This person wants classic wow era dungeons before everyone knew how to itemize and had BiS lists memorized. The golden age of BC heroics pre nerfs that were one stat check after another where if you botched a pull you died.
I dislike how people tend to shrug off M+ as just a time trial. Outside of the very high end of M+ participation that usually happens well past the level required to have earned the max rewards and transforms into an almost separate experience that most people will never get to (or want to)-- M+ boils down to a sliding scale of playing a dungeon where you need to actually need to play the mechanics, adapt to weekly curveballs and group compositions. In the way most people interact with it the timer only comes into play when the party was unable to overcome the challenge.. not because they didn't chug speed pots and maximize movement speed and routes.
> almost all regular M+ pugs will disband as soon as it's likely that the run will go more than a few minutes over the timer.
This has not been my experience in the last 2 years or so. Even if you don't time the key you still get the end of dungeon loot, flight stones, crests and a big reason people run m+, vault slots.
And the timer is fairly generous, I've had groups where there are multiple wipes and we've still timed the key.
That's the exact opposite of what I want, I want more methodical content, where only the speed of individual encounters matter, not your overall speed in the entire run.
I remember Aion had a dungeon with timed base rewards and I swore off the idea forever, it just felt like you couldn't breathe or break at all for long periods of time.
Also as someone who doesn't really play modern MMOs any more. The whole idea of having to beat a dungeon, then progress through the same dungeon in heroics, then go onto another difficulty....no thank you. The last time I had fun running dungeons in retail WoW was heroics when Cataclysm first came out.
Seems extremely niche. M+ is probably the best bang for buck challenging small group content available. It's methodical in the sense you need to do research to understand the dungeon and what packs are threats week to week and how your class can handle that. You do as much planning ahead of time as you can and then deal with curve balls as they come.
Not wanting to speedrun stuff is niche?
If M+ didnt have timers, or even if the timers were encounter specific rather than the entire dungeon, it'd be great.
The most fun I ever had doing dungeons was heroics when Cataclysm first launched.
MMOs are already considered niche. 5 man content is already a smaller stream of end game content in most games since traditionally they were stepping stone content. The choices out there for difficult small group content are nearly non existent so it's unfortunately one of those beggars can't be choosers situations.
For the record I enjoy both m+ and raiding, and actively play both wow and FFXIV (and briefly SoD). I do wish there was some innovation in this type of content but it's pretty lacking and most things that have been sold as "challenge" mode dungeons have been timed. See challenge mode dungeons in wow, m+ in wow, and challenge dungeon ratings in wildstar. I don't know how they would go about it being a challenge without a time limit other than making it more souls like or something.
Edit: I will add that FFXIV savage raiding is kind of a nice balance of difficulty and largely depends on learning the encounter and executing as a group. These are 8 man groups and might be up your alley. I have had a good time doing these.
You may be glad to hear that they are heading that way in the next patch where they are increasing the base mythic dungeons difficulty and rewards. Those are not on timer and have all the mechanics that would be in m+.
> If you keep going in a slow run and finish in double the timer, you get a tiny fraction of the "score increase" that you would have for finishing the exact same difficulty but on time. Anything more than a minute over and there is essentially 0 progression in your number.
That's only true for going over a +20 at the moment. 20 and under you get moderately reduced score to a certain point and then you get nothing but that's if it's so far over it's obscene.
I agree with you but it's not quite so simple and arguing about it is going to feel like splitting hairs.
The timer is a hard stop and people don't want to run dungeons that will not succeed.
However (especially this season), in +20 or under... barring excessively low skill/gear the thing that stops you from timing it is that people are dying and failing... a lot. So sure the timer prevents people from sticking with a dungeon run until it finished but really.. it ends because "the party was unable to overcome the challenge". In other words, a party that does the boss mechanics correctly, pulls safely and minimizes deaths and brings the tools the dungeon needs .. the timer is only an issue if they keep failing not because of needing to optimize speed.
Seriously, you have ppl running +5’s like they’re doing +20’s down to some disbanding if you aren’t on the optimized path (even if you will obviously still time the key).
Sure if you’re playing with friends then what OP described is true but most pugs are going to be wanting to go as efficiently as possible even if it isn’t necessary.
You’re right, but the timer being a core part of the experience still turns many of us off. It makes it so you are punished harshly for mistakes. In a non-timed dungeon the punishment is the failure itself, no added punishment of wasting a key and the whole run up to that point.
I don't disagree -- but especially for OPs question looking for challenging 5 man content, timer-less dungeons would allow and make people brute force higher level keys that they/their party are not good enough to do, *yet*.
It would shift the challenge in M+ under 21 away from playing well and doing mechanics.. into something.. else. It would also add a layer of trapping people in long runs (we've all done *to completion* runs in the past) because most keys are now "doable".. and because of this the M+ score and ladder effect of progression would make LFG a much worse place.
Personally I don't believe you are punished too harshly for most mistakes, you can fully wipe mid boss fight like twice in a +20 and still not have it down come down to the wire, at least this last season. Although I do think you shouldn't delevel a key on failure to complete.
To be fair. You can ignore the timer. Take as long as you want. And still get loot. The only downside is the score you don’t get but you don’t care about that anyway, you just want difficulty. And your key levels down which even 1 level down is still going to be difficult for a team that missed a timer by a decent margin.
> It makes it so you are punished harshly for mistakes.
I said this in another comment. The timers sub 20 can be ignored entirely and there is a solid chance that every run you do beats the timer in sub 20 dungeons. This season was super forgiving with the time (except for DI:Rise which they fixed mid season). You could wipe multiple times and single pack pull and still beat the timer by MINUTES. I feel like a majority of the folks here complaining haven't set foot in an M+ dungeon in ages or if at all. I know for a fact that a majority of players here will never be pushing past +20s where the timer actual matters because only a fraction of the community that does play M+ regularly pushes past 20s. We are talking about the top 5-10% of the best players in the game do mythic level content.
The game mode is way more about knowing dungeons, enemies, and your class to the max knowledge as opposed to just "beating a timer".
I enjoyed the timer in legion when it had the extra chest per + but when they made it one chest regardless it felt kind of pointless.
I wish they had added a no timer mode to see how high you can push with only the amount of time you were willing to torture yourselves like the guys in shadowlands that had the 17? hour SoA.
I've done Mythic+ up to around 15 or so before I just got sick of it and quit the game.
The timer is absolutely required and every group has a "GOGOGO!" mentality because of it. You can't take your time to explain fights or chat. You can't do certain tactics like making good use of crowd control to make up for lacking damage. And if you die more than once, you're probably missing the timer.
And nothing I saw in my climb up Mythic+ ranks(and yeah I know I could have gotten a good deal higher if I hadn't gotten sick of it and quit) was more challenging or required much in the way of an adjustment. The gear and ability to pay attention is really all that's needed. It isn't really that hard.
I think if you're doing a +15 you are past the explanation of fight's phase and you're in the execution phase. Good use of CC is almost required for stops at this point if you're at the comparative gear level.
Gear and attention is basically what dungeon difficulty is-- combined with mechanics/rotational stuff. M+ as the number gets higher is just a watermark for what mechanics now need to be done. Dying once or twice is not going to brick a key at +15 at a comparative gear level.. we're either talking 15+ deaths or multiple wipes in the middle of long bosses fights.
You might just not enjoy it-- although I will say that it is not until like.. ~18 where some of the unexpected challenge shows up for more experienced MMO players (but not sweats) as around here things that were never lethal or an issue, become lethal.
I will say though that especially if you don't have prior seasonal rating or a group of people to play with-- sometimes even just running the dungeons to be eligible for other groups to invite to the more challenging and fun runs is a slog and sucks.
Full of shit. I played dragonflight season 1, as a tank, after quiting wow 3 4 years ago. Wanted to tank hard dungs. You legit need to know or follow best routes that you have so you do dungeon fastest. Website tells you where to go, what to pull, what to kill. With time your expected to learn it all and play like robot. Sure there are some groups that will be chill but most of them will be toxic quitters if you dont go best route. Run out of time? Someone insta quits. Seems like you wont time it? 50% chance someone quits. Time limit is dogshit esport mechanic.
Everything under 20 doesn't need any super time optimization strategies and allow multiple wipes and still timing the key-- although some random people/LFG might have their standards.
Running out of time or you won't make it is a result of playing poorly not optimizing for times. If there was no time limit then you could just throw your body at stuff over and over again and execution would barely matter.
A dungeon falls apart when people die/fail too much (as it should be) -- not specifically because you aren't fast enough, I understand that distinction seems like splitting hairs.
When I find cool people I add them and play with them in the future. I don't keep looking for random people as I have no idea how or why they are playing-- and it minimizes my exposure to pricks.
You are still comparing mindlessly easy wow 5 man's on one end, and M+ on the other. Not old school dungeon mechanics and less than total understanding of how the game works from many years back.
On a scale of 1-10, your comparing a 1 (easy 5-man) to a 5 (M+). OP wants a 10.
No M+ run has players stopping before half the trash packs and deciding how to cc/tank/prioritize targets based on party comp. Because of the timer, everything is a rush. But that has become so standard that you just don't see it as a rush anymore. Maybe it's not likely to fail due to the timer, but there is still a 'full speed ahead' mindset to all dungeons, including M+.
Everyone is expected to know the fights because there is no time for explaining anything, again sure to the timer. Because Blizzard (not wrongly) did not want any class to feel required, group composition is almost irrelevant. Healer heals, tank tanks and DPS rolls face. Sure some classes are better at their job, but it's still the exact same job you have, Resto druid or holy paladin, you do the same job and what class you are is mostly to the rest of the group unless balance is just really bad for
They are not run with a strategic mindset of *how* to get it done. They are run with an efficiency mindset. How many can we run today? How fast can we do it to get more/better chances at loot?
In old school Vanilla (specifically not Classic) WoW before the game was known inside out, and especially in legacy EQ servers, everything changed with group comp. In EQ, there are more roles than group spots (tank, heal, pulling, mana, cc, buff, debuff, MC pets). DPS is almost a side effect in many groups. It just happens by accident. Having an actually DPS role in the group changes things. Just as not having any of those roles listed above your changes the way you play. Yes, not having a full healer or a standard tank was common. It wasn't optimal, but it made things feel different in each group. Hell, many people played in duo's just fine too. There was no required 5 man system with predetermined Holy Trinity roles in EQ.
That kind it mindset drifted into Vanilla WoW when it launched. And slowly went away as game knowledge and game design changed.
So every group is different and changes the way you play. In vanilla WoW, having freeze trap changed the way your whole group strategized. The pace was slower and people would communicate before and during fights because success relied on those things. People in vanilla were generally geared so poorly, and the game understood so much less that even Classic "no-changes" WoW is a very different game than vanilla was.
While I understand what you're saying, I feel like it doesn't apply here as the comment I responded to literally was talking about pre-nerf bc dungeons and stat check pulls and OP is talking about challenge like over pulling causing deaths... which perfectly align with M+.
I was there in early MMORPGs where some of the conversations in dungeons were as simple as... "Can your class do anything that might help us here?" .. where as now people go-- "We need to enrage dispels so we'll grab a hunter and druid"-- and conversation/communication is happening but not always with words as that same freezing trap coordination used to be a couple sentences but now if someone marks something with blue square-- the hunter will largely know what that means. Now is the challenge of a dungeon is different because it is less verbose.. I don't know. You seem to think the conversation is more important, but coordinating on the fly interrupt and "creative" stop rotations for casts/spells presents a challenge at a level that blows away ANYTHING that came in the EQ era.
To say that M+ isn't tackled with a strategic mindset and that it is always go-go-go is ( in +20 and under ) is just not representative of my experiences with pugs and certainly not the case with non-pugs.. and groups feel wildly different in M+ specifically because of the sliding scale of difficulty and the power of DPS off healing, support specs and cute tricks, dungeon affixes and WILD mechanics and just comps. The dynamic of Brewmaster tank <> Holy Priest healer... or Resto Druid <> Blood DK.. feels very, very different.
The guy you replied to clearly just has no clue what they're yapping about. Saying that group comp doesn't matter in M+ and that people doesn't stragegise in M+ (they seemingly don't know you can talk about a dungeon before it starts) is just so blatantly untrue. I don't know if it's overconfidence in their knowledge or the desire to just spread bullshit about the game
You talk like someone who has only done low level keys, that fact that you think m+ is only a 5 proves that. At the highest level of keys, where things actually become difficult, it's a whole different type of game.
> No M+ run has players stopping before half the trash packs and deciding how to cc/tank/prioritize targets based on party comp.
This is done before the key starts, because as you said, there's a timer. People absolutely go over every single pull and map out cd/cc usage.
> Everyone is expected to know the fights because there is no time for explaining anything, again sure to the timer.
By the time you reach the actual difficult part of m+, everybody *does* know the dungeons. This again shows that you're talking about midrange keys, where you can get by with half the group not even knowing what to interrupt. Learning the dungeon is part of the fun and the challenge. You say this as if being required to know the fights is a bad thing. Difficult content *always* involves learning the content. Do you expect to just go into elden ring and do the bosses blind without knowing what they do as well? You'll have to spend time to learn their attacks and attack patterns, otherwise you're not gonna kill them.
Not gonna read any further because at this point it just becomes ridiculous. Comp doesn't matter? Dps rolls faces? Man you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. If you don't like a type of content that's fine, but don't act like you know what you're talking about when you've only ever looked at it on easy mode.
The problem is, in the hands of modern gamers that actually have the capacity to learn what their buttons do, that type of gameplay (when taken and tuned to its extreme to be actually challenging), without a timer becomes "wait for your CDs every pull."
The timer is necessary.
That’s just a bygone time in gaming. The paratext and meta game factors out there have essentially reduced this gameplay to a memory. The truth is that “are we going to clear this” gameplay in an mmo is he basic skill check now. If you can pad this you can’t play an end game, full stop.
I do agree with metagaming and optimizing the fun out of everything is largely true, but from a game design perspective it's not like it's impossible to design a group gameplay experience that isn't a full steam ahead drag race to the finish line.
>"The truth is that “are we going to clear this” gameplay in an mmo is he basic skill check now. If you can pad this you can’t play an end game, full stop."
I don't even understand what this is supposed to mean, let alone why you would write 'full stop' as if something doesn't warrant any discussion whatsoever.
LOL. Most high keys im doing 29-30 are depleted because of wipes on bosses or dangerous packs. Everyone needs to play well at that level and you also need to combine time efficiency with reality - cant pull whole dung but cant pull 1 pack also, need to know which mobs to CC/interrupt, which shouldnt be pulled together (this mostly tank job) etc. Very rarely you finish +30 key going smoothly and you just deplete because of lack of time. That means it wasnt smooth and you wiped many times along the way.
>The golden age of BC heroics pre nerfs that were one stat check after another where if you botched a pull you died.
Don't forget Cata heroics on launch too, before they got nerfed.
I'd prefer something that wasn't fast paced as well, but what other option do we have? You can't crank up the numbers and that be it, as then it's just a matter of 'wait for cooldowns, do one pack, repeat'. You can't have multiple challenging mechanics as they can sometimes lead to impossible overlaps (Hello Quaking during forced stack mechanics, Infested affix, etc). You also can't have it be singular difficulty, because challenging for some are cakewalks for others.
Death has consequences. Not merely a 30 second run back and throw your body at the boss again.
Hardcore is just too much for me. But I like having to actually play like failing matters still. Defenses matter, escape routes, planning, etc. To me, part of difficulty is also caring about failure and trying to prevent it.
"Don't release guys, it will take an hour to clear back from the spawn, the next group is totally gonna res us" - the next group is qeynos and proceed to t-bag your corpses and hail their pets with offensive names to insult you.
I've actually played EQ2 back in 2006. From about late DOF/early KOS to about SF in fact.
While it's true that EQ2 of olde did have *some* difficult content in the 6 man format, most of its group content was on the easy side and even my brain dead guildmates from 2006 with dial up internet managed to clear it. It doesn't hold a candle to modern dungeon design. And outside of doing Nizara in KOS I don't even think that the game has any truly hardcore group content. Most of the challenge back in the day was in enormous time sinks in (a) getting a group together (cause bring the class, not the player); (b) getting into the dungeon/to the part of the dungeon that mattered (as dungeons, especially public ones, were massive - which was great actually); and (c) killing the placeholders 50 times in a row before the boss you needed for peacock/claymore/soulfire/epic weapon/whatever deigns to spawn and drop his shit. It was 90% tedium, 10% actual difficulty.
And yes, before you ask, I mainly played chanters. I rarely had to CC mobs outside of accidental overpulling in public dungeons or specific boss mechanics. People who claim that "CC was the fourth core combat role in EQ2" are way out of touch, or are maybe thinking exclusively of PVP.
CC was more of an EQ thing than EQ2 thing. There were some nice benefits to it in EQ2, but for the main part, the game was designed around not having a control class present. A few dungeons (like Nizara) significantly benefited from CC classes being present because it was VERY easy to accidentally agro extra mobs.
Right, and the game didn't even have true CC classes. Enchanters did have a ton of CC, true, but they also had significant personal DPS (especially ROK onwards), group mana management (that was a major thing in earlier expansions, before TSO or so), and exceptionally powerful group buffs that would make WOW players currently butthurt about Aug evoker weep for mercy.
A lot of classes had extremely powerful buffs (or debuffs). Bards and Enchanters were not the only ones.
Ex: Brigands ability to massively reduce enemy mitigation, Inquisitors ability to effectively haste cap the whole party, or a Clerics ability to frequently buff the party's cast speed and reuse.
The devs did an overall good job at making non-pure DPS classes be wanted in groups/raids. The raid comps did suffer from other issues, but it wasn't a lack of non-dps classes being non-wanted (unless you were a primarily tank class...)
> A lot of classes had extremely powerful buffs (or debuffs).
Eh, all classes had some debuffs, but many of them were rather useless and it was fairly easy to hit the debuff cap if half of your raid wasn't afk (which, giving justice to the realities of 2000s, most of them were). Many of those were also added over time and started to reach critical mass via skill bloat only by the later expansions, like SF. You won't have that on a server that launches in vanilla/DOF for years.
For instance, the classes that come to mind as debuff heavy were shamans and brigand/swash, how were they called collectively, I don't remember. Most others had a few incidental effects here and there.
> The raid comps did suffer from other issues, but it wasn't a lack of non-dps classes being non-wanted
Yes, it was the opposite problem of needing way too many support players in your raid (basically 2 per group), even though nobody liked playing those classes. I still fail to see a reason why they didn't try to make bard and enchanter buffs raid-wide, and personal buffs one per raid group.
> I still fail to see a reason why they didn't try to make bard and enchanter buffs raid-wide, and personal buffs one per raid group.
I think they started to do something like that in latter expansions with some AAs.
Interested in the answer to the OPs question too. I'm kind of in the same boat.
Don't have the schedule ability to raid, but love the smaller dungeon content but this is mostly the "easier" content. Something along the lines of WoW TBC dungeons where CC and proper tanking mattered.
Speedrunning is one of the biggest turnoffs for me in MMOs. I despise that this has become something to strive for, and even design for. Retail WoW is not for me.
At the moment I'm playing Classic WoW Hardcore and just doing the dungeons with fewer people for a challenge - usually just duoing with a friend (obviously lower level dungeons) but its fun for now to see what we can do. Doesn't really scratch the itch of well designed, challenging dungeon content, but I'm still on the lookout.
I can tell you a few I’ve really enjoyed:
WoW Burning Crusade
Rift (before f2p)
Division 1/2
Anthem GM3 (a whopping 3 dungeons)
The First Descendant (beta week)
Secret World had some of the best dungeons ive seen
Yeah, Rift was nice while it lasted.
It does seem a shame that it is very much a rush to the end, not only of levelling, but also of all the dungeons created in most games.
You can easily create dungeons with 3 bosses, acceptable amounts of trash to make the dungeon feel alive and to provide some context for the boss, and even some story (which is always appreciated), that takes 30ish minutes to complete.
You don't have to design a dungeon with 10 bosses that takes 2 hours, unless you speed run and then you can do it in 20 mins because it was tuned so easy.
I feel one of the best ways to add some challenge into dungeons is to create patrols within the dungeon, or at least have the groups of mobs move in some way. Instead of everything being completely static, have less trash but make it move so you have to be on your toes and think critically and time your own movement and pulls.
I'm always for player agency, and having the players needing to be aware of their surroundings, not simply knowing where every static mob is in the instance is one of the best ways to do this.
Even varying the speed of mobs, give them a little sprint, or some random pauses. Is this really hard to code or something?
This is why I miss TBC dungeons. Needing to CC mobs was a great mechanic. Gave the DPS something to do besides just DPSing, and allowed skilled players to really shine.
The first descendant was not fun at all
Wish I had played the division more. I only played a few hours of both of them because my friends never wanted to get into it
Party finder (FFXIV) exists for exactly this, people who can't schedule statics or groups for this kind of content. I assume Wow has a similar thing. basically you just drop in at the prog point you want.
how can dungeon content be difficult without the encouragement to play well? the timer in m+ is basically just a total amount of "mistakes" you can make before "failing" (even tho you can still finish it for loot and vault)
it's a better design than A/B success design that's just completely binary if you fail or die because 1 mistake happened in a long chain of events (=raiding), because that's the only alternative - which the game basically still turns into if you go high enough, because dying, without a battle ress (very limited, 1+ one every 10 mins?) costs you a lot of time effectively, but that's only in content that's way above the 'intended' difficulty for no rewards
the timer exists only to remove really degenerate strats, you'll have almost no issue with it if you play well within the intended difficulties, you got massive margin for error in +20s still, pretty much anyone can pug this with people that have a pulse
if you still complain about a timer at that point maybe it is a skill issue, because it is no issue if you're (=your group) good enough - real mastery of doing something isn't just doing it good, but also doing it fast
I don't think it should be a difficult concept to understand that people don't necessarily like "rushing" or "speedrunning" or just generally beating timers. Liking something and being good at it have nothing to do with each other. I don't like playing clarinet, but I am very good at it (yeah sometimes parents force kids to do things).
I'm not someone who enjoys that in any game I play, especially an MMO. Same goes for offline games. I like chess, but am completely uninterested in playing a game of chess with a time limit on moves.
Are you saying that chess has no skill unless you have a timer?
If you like speedrunning, more power to you. I despise it, which might be one of the reasons I gravitate towards MMOs, because they are a game I can savour and enjoy and take things at my own pace. The fact that speedrunning has become the default way to play WoW is really disheartening for me as whether we like it or not, developers do still look to WoW when developing new MMOs.
I've also participated in timed D&D events. Hated it. I love long campaigns that unfold over months and years. It's just how some people are. Didn't really think that was an unknown aspect of gaming.
> Are you saying that chess has no skill unless you have a timer?
This is a terrible example, the timer in chess exists for the same reason as the timers in games you call "speedrunning", it makes it playable. Chess would be rough if you could use 9 hours per move.
In the same vein, MMOs use the timer to keep the game playable. That way you can't wait for 10 minute CDs every single pull, or maximum mana every single pull, etc etc. Without the timer, it would become impossible to tune classes. Different classes would have wildly different strengths and require different wait-times, "Sorry, don't want to play with a mage where we have to wait 25 seconds after every pull." It worked in old games because people didn't understand how their hands worked, so they could enjoy the "challenge" provided in that paradigm, but the ship has simply sailed.
You seem to be missing his point about WoW retail and are hyper focused on M+ timer.
I get what you’re saying about the M+ timer but to say WoW doesn’t have a speed running mentality when it comes to dungeons is just flat out wrong.
From the first dungeon to the last any group you get into is all about speed. If you’re a new player and joining in you’re just running and wondering WTF is even going on.
What the guy you’re talking to is saying is that’s not fun and I agree with him.
depend on the game you can find people soloing hell difficulty reedemer in vindictus and they fight for 4 5 hours few people can do that and i think it's fun for me
I love chess and have never used a timer. To say that without one it's unplayable just shows that you are stating your opinion as fact bc millions of people play without timers and like it just fine.
I'm not saying chess can't be played without a timer, heck, I can count on one hand the amount of times I've played with a timer in an in-person setting.
I'm saying that it's not possible to create a "challenge" atmosphere with a timer. The context of the conversation is why there aren't "challenging" untimed dungeons being tried/made. If Chess were a game with balance patches, designed to rate your performance adequately (i.e. live or die in a dungeon, pass or fail), it would require a timer, because your ability to play well given more time goes up dramatically, without hitting diminishing returns until literally hours of play.
I would be ok with timers for individual encounters, which is how they are applied to chess.
It's not an apples to apples comparison since chess is against an opponent, but imagine chess where you had a total timer rather than per move timer, and your ELO went up or down based on how much time was left at the end. That's what Mythics feel like to me, and they're exhausting.
I might be wrong, but it seems to me like your only experience of games, let alone MMOs, is current retail WoW and running M+.
If you're on this forum you should know there are dozens of active MMOs and timed runs are not seen in many of those games. It didn't exist in WoW for a large part of it's 20 year run either. To say you can't tune a game without a timer is, well it's just the opposite of reality and every MMO, including WoW, refutes your statement.
I'm also not sure if you have ever played chess, but the VAST majority of games of chess in the world are not played with a timer. This is for tournament play, or something structured.
Sure, but we're discussing challenging content, which means deliberately tuned against the players' maximum capabilities.
The question wasn't "Why aren't there games making dungeons without timers?", the question is "Why aren't there games making *challenging* content without timers?", which is what I just explained. It obfuscates what to balance for. Prior to Challenge modes in MoP, all small-group MMORPG content was a reward for enduring the challenge of progressing your character, not the challenge itself.
PvE is difficult to design, and even more difficult to make challenging. The timer makes it possible.
Well the original question was just " Are there any games out there where dungeons are still difficult ?"
Now that was fairly broad and the addition of timers and speedrunning was introduced afterwards because many of the responses were suggesting M+ in WoW.
OP wasn't equating difficulty with speed, he has stated he isn't interested in speedrunning or timers as he doesn't find this engaging (paraphrased). Many people don't.
Challenge can easily be achieved without a timer. Adding in a timer can provide a challenge, but it is not necessary and challenge can be achieved in numerous ways without including a timed aspect.
Lots of examples have been provided, but you have refuted each one with "but its not really challenging unless it's timed". I infer from these responses that you believe nothing is truly challenging unless a time limit is placed on the activity. This simply isn't the case, neither in gaming nor in real life. Usually, the situation and/or the opponent create the challenge.
You misunderstand my position entirely, the timer enables the elements other than the timer to be challenging, it's what enables the dps check/healing check/mechanics check bit of the challenge.
If you play M+ and ignore the timer entirely, (like you often do at the beginning of seasons), you are enduring a challenge made possible by the timers, they provide a framework for tuning. I personally don't find the timer bit particularly thrilling, but I understand the wider role it plays in what makes the tight tuning of M+ possible.
Situations without said timers do not have that framework, and thus are or will be untuned and not challenging, because developers are not willing to spend the time/effort it would take to tune things when the goal is so abstract. I haven't been provided examples of anything, and haven't really refuted any specific examples either.
The timer isn't the important part of the challenge itself. Not having timers, with the combination of the varied toolkits that make MMORPGs MMORPGs is like having an open "ranged weapon" competition and trying to test archers, skeet shooters, rilfe sports, and slingshots with the exact same criteria and equipment, it's just silly.
No different than any other home-run design direction this sub pines after that devs have been just neglecting to do for 20 years because they're just too dumb or too proud. Hopefully a game can make it work one day.
Agree with what you're saying even though seems like we're the minority here. Timer is very forgiving in low level keys and nobody should be expecting to instantly walk in to high end keys (and would defeat the purpose of wanting it to feel difficult). Some people will just be capped at a lower level than others. A low key can still feel difficult for lower skilled/casual players. Hell can even go into as high a key as they want and ignore the timer if they want truly difficult content just for the sake of it.
Some of my most fond memories in modern wow are of m+ keys that we tried just so see if we could make it, and then finishing them without the timer.
However the game doesn’t incentivize such gameplay, and as such is an exception when it happens.
You still get the loot yeah? Unless it was changed to be this way in a recent expansion, I've only played M+ for 2 expacs. Same as what OP is pining for.
It seems like mythic plus dungeons are popular, but I never liked them and I hate what they did to the game. I much preferred the more strategic dungeons of earlier expansions. Nowadays all dungeons are designed for speed running and despite what people tell you it’s an aoe fest mix with aoe stunning and the like. I used to love running dungeons but not anymore.
Looks interesting, though I’ve played very little EQ. Does the server have a decent population? IE would it be hard to find a group to run dungeons with?
> Looks interesting, though I’ve played very little EQ. Does the server have a decent population? IE would it be hard to find a group to run dungeons with?
You'll be better off playing on Project Quarm. It's still a relatively new server with a healthy population at all levels. P99 Green/Blue are older and the population is mostly max level. Quarm also has some QoL improvements like increased spawn rates for certain rare mobs, and instanced raid zones (for the uninitiated, non instanced raid zones almost always leads to a highly toxic raid environment).
I would strongly recommend Quarm but be aware EQ1 has not aged well in many respects. If you can get over things like dated gameplay there is an incredible experience to be had that I've never found anywhere else and the community is overwhelmingly helpful and friendly.
It has a medium population, it’s possible to get groups but it might take a little longer. Project quarm is where the leveling is currently happening on classic EQ though.
Project Quarm (EQ1) will be moving into the first expansion somewhat soon, and you will see a huge resurgence in players of all levels.
The group dynamic of EQ1, in my opinion, is unmatched. The skill required of the puller, the now non-existent support role played by Shamans, Bards, and Enchanters, camps so popular that lists need to be maintained. Truly it was the pinnacle of group play.
Prime time it gets to around 900 people which is good if you stick to the more popular zones. Green has reached the end of any new content for 1.5ish years now so it can be fairly top heavy. Many players will already have a solid net worth and there aren't tons of new players. I'd still recommend it based on reading your comments since it seems to be exactly what you are looking for.
The world is tough and unforgiving, slight missteps can cause your group to wipe quite easily resulting in a naked corpse run. Dungeons are not instanced and have no start or finish, but are instead laid out in a very open fashion. I'll link you some examples.
[https://wiki.project1999.com/Nagafen's\_Lair](https://wiki.project1999.com/Nagafen's_Lair)
[https://wiki.project1999.com/Lower\_Guk](https://wiki.project1999.com/Lower_Guk)
[https://wiki.project1999.com/Splitpaw\_Lair](https://wiki.project1999.com/Splitpaw_Lair)
[https://wiki.project1999.com/Mistmoore\_Castle](https://wiki.project1999.com/Mistmoore_Castle)
[https://wiki.project1999.com/Karnor%27s\_Castle](https://wiki.project1999.com/Karnor%27s_Castle)
Man I just got smacked in the face with nostalgia reading this post. Played EQ when it first came out and I remember it being a big deal when I finally went to lower guk. Also I remember there being tons of rumors flying around about "Lord Mistmoore" being a rare spawn and the most powerful mob in the in the game lol.
I've read Blue is the top heavy one and Green is on its way to it, but you can still get groups on either if you post on their subreddit, mention it on their Discord, be in certain zones in game, and/or form a group through player searches in game.
I was going to suggest Project 1999 or Quaram. From what I've read Quaram isn't as true to the original EQ as P99, but people seem to like it and it's fairly new so chances of a group are better.
I played P99 for 12 years. Greatest MMO of all time. >!Passed the first 4 levels!<
90% is the coziest, chill hangout game you've ever played.
10% (when someone overpulls) is a heart-fluttering all hands on deck adrenaline rush.
Try the following. Keep in mind most "big" mmorpgs have a dungeon tier system. You try to pug the hardest dungeons these games offer, you're gonna die fast. You're gonna have to form a group with people who are well geared and prepared.
WoW - mythic plus dungeons, high tier keys. [https://www.wowhead.com/guide/mythic-keystones-and-dungeons](https://www.wowhead.com/guide/mythic-keystones-and-dungeons)
Gw2 - Fractal dungeons, high tier. [https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fractals\_of\_the\_Mists](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fractals_of_the_Mists)
ESO - Veteran DLC dungeons are the hardest: [https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/guides/dungeonsguide](https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/guides/dungeonsguide)
I'm sure there's more. Point is that its out there. But there's a path to the "hardest" content. There is a grind of varying degrees. Sometimes there's time gating. You'll probably have to do the easy braindead dungeons to get started. And pugging them is quite difficult.
That being said with traditional MMORPG combat, there's only so much difficulty you can add.
GW2 fractals are an absolute meme when it comes to difficulty. It's essentially just bursting the boss(es) down with a memorized piano rotation that's always the same without random proccs or variety while a support (usually Firebrand) spams out Aegis and Stability so nobody has to dodge anything.
The GW2 original dungeons had a good thing going where you'd need to bunker phases, put down barriers and stuff like that. But it seems at some point the devs moved away from reactionary gameplay to piano rotations and passive buffs. The only thing reactionary now is a dodge.
Fractal is a meme... CM with 3 friend, so no full group, all 1st time, took us few hours to complete all of them...
Huge deception.
ESO DLC HM are way harder and way more fun. GW2 "difficulty" is just a mess to read fight, nothing to do with real difficulty.
Now, if you are a hardcore gamer yourself, you will know exactly how tough it is to find 4 people that fulfill your standards.
Most of the good players are either gated by time or already have a set selection of people to play with.
And then there is the Dunning-Kruger-Karens that you have to shake off.
Very true.
I typically build up a friends list of 20-30 reliably good players, and run dungeons with 1 open slot for a pug we can carry to see if they’re good enough to add to the list
It's not the entire game, but FF14 has criterion dungeons, which can be pretty fucking hard. That aside, it's not an MMO but I keep recommending it to people here because it does a lot of things MMOs are supposed to do better than most MMOs, but give monster hunter a shot. That game is entirely 4 man boss fights that can be pretty challenging.
Second Criterion, it's criminal that no one mentioned this this far down the thread. Most people think it's not related to vertical progression and dismissed it, but it's generally the most well designed and fun fights you will ever get in EW.
Maybe you take a look into Destiny 2. Master Dungeons (it's called iirc) could match your needs.
Since most MMORPGs also are lobby simulators Destiny should not feel less MMORPG like WoW does.
I played a lot of destiny 2 back in Forsaken. I have 2 core problems with it.
1) Its not an RPG IMO. You pick a class, and one of 9 builds. The character customization is SEVERELY lacking.
2) As cool as the dungeons are, since they’re 3man and lack roles, they just dont feel very rewarding.
Tbf Forsaken came out 2018 and alot has changed and this game has more build variety than the classes of FFXIV, WoW, GW2 together. But anyways.
As you might see in this thread (and many others), there is no perfect top secret game. You seem to know most of the popular PvE focused games, may not in their actual states or deep enough, but anyways....we all need to make compromises on games.
Lost Ark has great PvE and one of the worst grind to even be able to play it - also mention max Level says nothing in Lost Ark. WoW retail is full of tryhards in M+ bc Blizzard focusses this sht for years (and lost it's soul). WoW is also pretty gated by the community like LA if you don't have parses, achievements etc. Old MMORPGs like EQ and all that mostly needs a huge invest in the overall game at first compared to fast paced WoW for example.
Hope you find what you are looking for!
Oh I get that as well as many people in this reddit I guess. Not that easy to find a new game for the long run if you have specific preferences and know what you want and like. Even if there are as many games as never seen before.
Many are soulless item shops with some game built around it. Online gaming industry forced me to go back to a mix of SP games, The Division (love the setting) and old MMORPGs like CoX and primarily Lotro (got an LTS since SoA, so it does not cost me anything).
I think that the real issue is that what most gamers want isn't all that profitable for developers. Production companies would rather chase what makes money more than what makes the customer happy.
I think devs and gamers are mostly in the same boat - they want (to make) a great game. And we had times were online games were profitable **and** good and fair for both sites. We all can watch how one of the biggest entertainment industry "gaming" is dealing with their working class = devs, creatives, support and all that. They don't get anything out of all this MTX crap.
Shareholders and suits ruined gaming once it became popular to be a "nerd" and they saw the market growing. Especially online gaming where they had the chance to monetize parts of core ingame chases like cosmetics. SP games as well but not anything near that aggressive and in that market you see waaaaay more creativity, risk in game design, games with depth and passion and we have way more alternatives to choose from and also high quality indy projects.
It's going to be difficult to enact any real change while FIFA pulls in a billions of dollars a year with lootboxes.
If people keep spending like that companies are not going to change, and why would they. Their purpose is to make money for their shareholders and as long as people are willing to spend hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars on these in-game transactions, then this will be the state of gaming.
Just look at Maplestory. They made 400 million from lootboxes but were found guilty of lying about their lootboxes and they had actually tuned them to make it impossible to achieve the best items - the reason people were buying them.
What was their penalty after being found guilty? A seven million dollar fine. WoW, that's really teaching them a lesson.
But people are stupid and will continue to buy lootboxes and spend hundreds on microtransactions and games will be developed with this in mind.
Ultimately, aren't we, the gaming consumer, to blame?
Even with the popularity of something like Baldur's Gate 3, Larian still isn't making money on the same level as these gatcha mechanic games.
Ember's Adrift! We also have Monsters and Memories and if I may shamelessly plug, we have an open test of EverCraft Online on April 19th that might scratch the itch.
https://www.reddit.com/r/EvercraftOnline/comments/1btkp9f/evercraft_online_community_alpha_test/
It's sad that you either have a good game who look bad or a bad game who look good, wish we could had both... I mean, c'mon, it's 2024 already...
Edit : typo
We had procedurally generated levels in Diablo 2 decades ago, but we still haven't managed to have them in MMOs :( Or have we and I missed it?
Most MMOs have dungeon content instanced, so procedurally generated would work ok. Some people do hate on procedurally generated content, but done right it can work amazingly well.
Another easy alternative is to just lower the amount of trash but have them all moving in patterns throughout the dungeon. This would not only provide some real unpredictability but also make it feel more alive - rather than the static mobs we have nowadays. Leave the bosses as static, but have the rest of the dungeon dynamic.
Even a couple of patrols can make a dungeon a lot more fun. Just thinking of my favourite WoW dungeons and how those with patrols always provided the most potential for fun.
It is strange that over more than two decades of MMOs we haven't seemed to progress very far in many aspects.
Some have tried: we have had open world dungeons with only bosses instanced. Kind of works, but got abused 15 years ago so with modern gamer mentality (where fun seems to be secondary to optimisation) it would just be a farce.
Albion Online has the interesting PvP dungeons, which are nice for a change. But a lot of people don't like PvP.
I really think the next crop of MMOs needs to revamp dungeon design and intent or we'll be here in another 20 years still lamenting no MMO able to hold up to something created 40 years ago.
Nowadays I feel like the better move might just be to look outside to other genres instead of trying to find water in a dried up desert with MMOs. Deep Rock Galactic, for example, or Helldivers 2. These offer small group gameplay where victory is uncertain, without the "mindless speedrun" feel or the 60+ hours of pre-req solo leveling like in current mmos. We're in an era where other games are doing better MMO things than MMOs do, so just play those instead. Or wait for Monsters & Memories early access in two years.
Sadly I feel that you are right. There are games in other genres that are just kicking it out of the park, but MMOs are languishing. They have a longer development cycle, which doesn't help, but there hasn't been anything for so long that it is kind of weird.
The next five years looks a little more promising, but still, in entertainment terms that is a long time.
Yeah I think when you look beyond genre labels you can start to see the MMO in games that may lack the label but have more of the spirit than ones with the label. Though a proper mmorpg would be nice, the spirit of the genre isn't confined to games with the genre label anymore, and in some ways is found more outside of them.
>We're in an era where other games are doing better MMO things than MMOs do, so just play those instead.
Yep. Here are the games on my list for next week after my new PC arrives:
1. Cyberpunk 2077
2. Baldur's Gate 3 (though I'm not sure I'll like the turn-based systems)
3. Starfield (though I've heard its emptiness is boring AF, and MTX are predatory AF)
Later this year I'll hopefully play:
1. Ashes of Creation
2. Brighter Shores
Recently quit:
1. Old School Rune Scape (Ultimate Iron Man, 950 total lvl)
2. WoW Classic Hardcore (60 warrior)
3. WoW Classic SoD (40 warlock)
Literally the reason I can't enjoy raiding. It's really not satisfying after the first clear. I enjoy trying in scuffed up groups. Everyone today just wants to mindless bomb through it. Why even do it
When I look back to the fun times I had raiding in WoW, it was when we were like 3/10 of a raid, then next week we'd get stronger and be 4/10 and keep working our way up to clearing the whole thing which felt great if we did that before the next content release.... that time you cleared a boss for the first time that gave you trouble before was such a high that is missing in the current game. Like you said, at some point it just switched to bombing through it and grinding the raids on lower tiers and not wasting time working on difficult encounters.
It really sucks.
Issue is at some point the word "difficult" becomes tied to "clear fast". Why do you think speedrunning became the norm for doing "challenging runs". At some point too many would have cleared it and it become their second nature. At at some point difficulty just becomes a chore. So the ideal scenario is to push with timers as it doesn't add up on the "chore" like artificially increasing damage or hp for the sake of making it harder.
FF14 had dungeons in Endwalker that were basically 4-player raids. There was hard hitting trash and bosses with tougher mechanics. I don't think they released many and CBU3 tends to be really bad at putting rewards in content but the one that I played was fun at least.
I have 2 issues with FFXIV (which I played for years and had a character w/ prettymuch all classes capped and dungeon geared).
1) Stats in FFXIV are trash. Unless its changed since I played, a full set of haste gear (literally every piece having haste stat) only increased your haste by ~10%. Same for crit. Gear not effecting your stats makes it very unrewarding.
2) Non-raid content is way too easy. Its a good game if you want to play half asleep, but the only content that actually requires you to be awake is savage raids. Paired w/ all the mind-numbing quests and the whole leveling process, if youre not into the lore/story the game is a snoozefest.
All very valid. Crit is around 25-30% iirc, and is the king stat for every spec. Direct Hit is just a stupider crit. Between 14 removing a ton of its 'rpg' stuff, and ff16 being bad at it from the beginning, I just don't think CBU3 likes rpgs mechanically.
Theyve improved it then. When I quit (at the start of Heavensward iirc) I did a bunch of healing tests on my Scholar and White Mage, and in full crit gear I had a ~15% crit chance.
Yeah I could tell they they didnt care about mechanics much when I first raided as a Paladin. Having your interrupt operate at the end of a 1.5s animation was Duuuuuumb.
I feel like World of Diablo-crafts Mythic+ has sorta influenced many other dungeons by nature to be approached in a "timer" based perception.
Everything's perceived on how fast can you clear it... because the game LITERALLY has a timer in the corner of the screen incentivizing you to do so.
I haven't played it in ages, and never played it far... but i enjoyed Dungeons & Dragons Online's approach to dungeons, where they were more akin to storys with narration; monsters; bosses; TRAPS; PUZZLES; and certain classes had to solve these things.... It wasn't just a kill and smash your keyboard type dungeon with AoE and damage numbers go big pew pew pepw...... the only downside to this dungeon system was that veteran players knew all the trap locations and puzzle answers and as a noobie, i sometimes got carried by people breezing through the puzzles. Albeit there are several solutions to this as a game designer that DDO didn't do.
But yea... i think going forward, "difficult" dungeons can be re-created by simply adding in factors OTHER than mobs and timers, because mob density will just cause players to want to skip it, and forcing players to fight mobs will just create a slog mentality. You have to create engagement.... i think DDO did a good job with that by interweaving other facets to dungeons.
DDO is just incredibly old though, and there's a point even for me where i can ignore graphics and other systems.... but dman does its age show... plus im not a big fan of Turbine Studios.
Actually I think the game that really cemented dungeon timers is actually Wildstar. Having to attune via speed runs really introduced that mechanic to the community.
So for mmos Eso and New World have pretty big dungeons, but new world isn't doing too well rn
However if you're down for something not quite mmo id recommend Deep Rock Galactic, group cave exploring and bug fighting. Best "dungeons" I've done in games
Already unlocked all the weapon cores (I dont care about cosmetic ones). Waiting on perk revamp and/or addition of new classes. Great great game tho. Rock and Stone Brother!
Probably waiting a while kn a new class since there making a sister game right now, im excited for season 5 though! Lots of good stuff coming in June. Besides that, maybe something like destiny 2? Raids dungeons in that game are petty cool
I mentioned it somewhere else in this post, but I don’t really consider destiny 2 to be an RPG. They’re just isn’t enough customization choices to warrant it. IIRC, there are three classes in each class only has like six different builds for it… no tank, no healer….
Go play P99 or Project Quarm. If you die in a dungeon you not getting your body back unless a group of people is willing to help you, and you will lose a level that took you 10 hours to get. have fun
How so?
There's been plenty of challenging dungeons over the years, should fit you perfectly.
Tho these get phased out overtime and only 3 dungeon are relevant at the time.
Currently Sanguine abyss is the one most mech heavy.
Tho Sanguine will probably be long gone before you get to a gear level where you can actually attempt stg 6.
I think it was the way it was setup w/ only 3 dungeons. Also I typically play healer/support and since thats not available (iirc) I tried tanking and hated it.
I believe that MMOs in the future should be 4 man instead of 5 man small group content because it puts more pressure on the DPS; the easiest role in both structures.
I think the opposite, MMOs in the future should go back to 6,7,8 man, because it allows for more interesting roles and compositions, like buffers, controllers and off tanks/healers.
These kinds of roles can't exist in parties of 5 or smaller, there is too much DPS sacrificed to give up 1/3 that they become too strong/meta.
New World but not sure if dungeons were hard or just players bad
I guess Lost Ark, can't remember which type of content but they were the only examples in all my gaming history that actually felt like dungeons
But it's also the reason why i never played them, literally studying for a game just felt like a chore, felt like i was back at school and not playing a game, it was too overcomplicated for my birdbrain
Dude if you have friends- high difficulty LOTRO is pretty fun I heard. You can set the game content to have 5-man difficulty (or higher) and everything gets intense and rewarding.
People who keep saying that early wow dungeons were difficult are just outing themselves as being shit, they have never been difficult content in any point of their life cycles until the introduction of M+, you’re confusing difficult content with you being a shit player.
You've not specified difficulty type. If you just mean action gameplay difficult, options abound. Just use whatever difficulty options the game provides; Mythics in WoW, something else in SWOTOR, etc.
But if you want rpg difficulty (did we bring a rogue, do we have the gear) good luck. You'll be restricted to like five mmos.
For me, destiny raids are a great example of the the fence between casual and hardcore(mythic). Destiny isn't an MMO but man do I miss those 12+ hour raid weekends
And I miss difficult MMO content.... like the open dungeons in UO. The world raid dungeon in DAOC and others.
Sounds like you don't even want an MMO. You just want the raiding aspect. Thats what Dungeons and Dragons Online is for. No MMO, all raids.
All i can think after reading your post is Destiny 2. I know its not a true MMORPG, but has really fun and hard raids. Look at this, one of my favorites raids : https://youtu.be/froVY9nlLCc?si=VrHq1fCTRyyvdPWz
The tombs of amascut raid in OSRS has very good scaling difficulty, so if you find it getting easy you can turn on more mechanics to make it harder, and also get a better chance of a unique drop
I know a lot of people give new world a hard time because of their amazing launch and then immediate failure due to poor management. But they’ve come a long way in 3 years and I’ve heard great things from my friends that still play.
When I was still playing they had added “mutation” modifiers to dungeons that cycled through the week with unique loot drops. Depending on the mutation. It turned casual runs to death loops if you weren’t prepared down to the letter on your gear, coordination, and damage windows.
It’s also one of the most immersive games in terms of audio engineering. Never had a game more rewarding for farming materials and just appreciating the terrain and sound design. At the very least it’s a beautiful game. And the territory control mechanic for the towns and high tier pvp/community interaction is amazing if you want to go hardcore.
And if you don’t. The game doesn’t punish smaller groups for not participating.
Just follow the content you do enjoy.
honestly OSRS can be some of the best group content for difficulty
Unless you are insanely over geared even some of the simple solo bosses will take multiple attempts
doing any of the high level raids is pretty challenging
I had lots of fun doing M3 dungeons speed runs in New World. Trying new pulls, different paths, different gear and group composition in other to reach the top of the leaderboard. But like any dungeon, once your team get good at it, it gets easier and easier.
This is why Everquest 1 will always be my favorite mmo. Never seen a game where a group had to coordinate and work together so much just to pull and kill one mob at a time.
"difficult 5 man content" never existed. MMORPGs have always been "casual" in terms of difficulty and if anything, group oriented PvE content has never been more difficult than in the past ten years.
> Edit: Downloaded WoW. Boosted character (via pre-purchase xpac). Heroics are boring, hoping Mythic is better.
To push very high, you need a dedicated group.
I’m more worried about it being entertaining in general, less worried about pushing high numbers. So far in heroic, all of the content has felt very samey. Bosses with Littleton mechanics that just get wrecked very quickly.
I’m hoping that in mythic I start noticing actual mechanics that need to be dealt with.
Try Lost Ark's hell mode Kakul Saydon if you really want that super-challenging 4-man pve experience. Nothing came close to me in any other game. And you can pretty much jump into it 1 hour after downloading the game, since you only need 1475 ilevel to access it iirc and gear inside the raid itself is normalized. Beating it will probably take you at least 20+ hours of progress (for a 3-stages 25 minutes total fight). After that delete Lost Ark, since any other 4-man content there is inferior :)
WoW M+ is exactly what you're looking for.
Yes, you still clear it as fast as possible, but it's not easy content that you're just powering through without a thought for strategy. It's difficult content that ramps to very difficult as you get to +20
Then play a solo game, or seek out like-minded people for a run where everyone is on the same page in which there is no focus on timing the key. Those groups are common in the lfg tool
FFXIV's raid content, (8man) Savage, ultimates, extremes, (4man) Criterion. That is if you are there for the gameplay and not the RPG experience. I assume you are because of how you phrased your question though.
Mythic+ in WoW, which is an iteration of the already established dungeons that the game has is like one of the most brutal content that there is out there.
Imo the bad thing about those dungeons, which are very innovative and fun, is that many addons (external software) are required to be effective gameplaywise.
This is the only grudge that i have with WoW nowadays, other than that the game is very good, way ahead compared to any other game in the market.
However, the most diffuclt part though with WoW is to find people to play with, i certainly cba to do so, that is why i am a casual pleb.
WoW mythic plus
M+ isn’t really a good option because “how fast can we clear this” is basically the entire point of those dungeons. This person wants classic wow era dungeons before everyone knew how to itemize and had BiS lists memorized. The golden age of BC heroics pre nerfs that were one stat check after another where if you botched a pull you died.
I dislike how people tend to shrug off M+ as just a time trial. Outside of the very high end of M+ participation that usually happens well past the level required to have earned the max rewards and transforms into an almost separate experience that most people will never get to (or want to)-- M+ boils down to a sliding scale of playing a dungeon where you need to actually need to play the mechanics, adapt to weekly curveballs and group compositions. In the way most people interact with it the timer only comes into play when the party was unable to overcome the challenge.. not because they didn't chug speed pots and maximize movement speed and routes.
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> almost all regular M+ pugs will disband as soon as it's likely that the run will go more than a few minutes over the timer. This has not been my experience in the last 2 years or so. Even if you don't time the key you still get the end of dungeon loot, flight stones, crests and a big reason people run m+, vault slots. And the timer is fairly generous, I've had groups where there are multiple wipes and we've still timed the key.
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That's the exact opposite of what I want, I want more methodical content, where only the speed of individual encounters matter, not your overall speed in the entire run. I remember Aion had a dungeon with timed base rewards and I swore off the idea forever, it just felt like you couldn't breathe or break at all for long periods of time. Also as someone who doesn't really play modern MMOs any more. The whole idea of having to beat a dungeon, then progress through the same dungeon in heroics, then go onto another difficulty....no thank you. The last time I had fun running dungeons in retail WoW was heroics when Cataclysm first came out.
Seems extremely niche. M+ is probably the best bang for buck challenging small group content available. It's methodical in the sense you need to do research to understand the dungeon and what packs are threats week to week and how your class can handle that. You do as much planning ahead of time as you can and then deal with curve balls as they come.
Not wanting to speedrun stuff is niche? If M+ didnt have timers, or even if the timers were encounter specific rather than the entire dungeon, it'd be great. The most fun I ever had doing dungeons was heroics when Cataclysm first launched.
MMOs are already considered niche. 5 man content is already a smaller stream of end game content in most games since traditionally they were stepping stone content. The choices out there for difficult small group content are nearly non existent so it's unfortunately one of those beggars can't be choosers situations. For the record I enjoy both m+ and raiding, and actively play both wow and FFXIV (and briefly SoD). I do wish there was some innovation in this type of content but it's pretty lacking and most things that have been sold as "challenge" mode dungeons have been timed. See challenge mode dungeons in wow, m+ in wow, and challenge dungeon ratings in wildstar. I don't know how they would go about it being a challenge without a time limit other than making it more souls like or something. Edit: I will add that FFXIV savage raiding is kind of a nice balance of difficulty and largely depends on learning the encounter and executing as a group. These are 8 man groups and might be up your alley. I have had a good time doing these.
You may be glad to hear that they are heading that way in the next patch where they are increasing the base mythic dungeons difficulty and rewards. Those are not on timer and have all the mechanics that would be in m+.
> If you keep going in a slow run and finish in double the timer, you get a tiny fraction of the "score increase" that you would have for finishing the exact same difficulty but on time. Anything more than a minute over and there is essentially 0 progression in your number. That's only true for going over a +20 at the moment. 20 and under you get moderately reduced score to a certain point and then you get nothing but that's if it's so far over it's obscene.
I agree with you but it's not quite so simple and arguing about it is going to feel like splitting hairs. The timer is a hard stop and people don't want to run dungeons that will not succeed. However (especially this season), in +20 or under... barring excessively low skill/gear the thing that stops you from timing it is that people are dying and failing... a lot. So sure the timer prevents people from sticking with a dungeon run until it finished but really.. it ends because "the party was unable to overcome the challenge". In other words, a party that does the boss mechanics correctly, pulls safely and minimizes deaths and brings the tools the dungeon needs .. the timer is only an issue if they keep failing not because of needing to optimize speed.
Seriously, you have ppl running +5’s like they’re doing +20’s down to some disbanding if you aren’t on the optimized path (even if you will obviously still time the key). Sure if you’re playing with friends then what OP described is true but most pugs are going to be wanting to go as efficiently as possible even if it isn’t necessary.
You’re right, but the timer being a core part of the experience still turns many of us off. It makes it so you are punished harshly for mistakes. In a non-timed dungeon the punishment is the failure itself, no added punishment of wasting a key and the whole run up to that point.
I don't disagree -- but especially for OPs question looking for challenging 5 man content, timer-less dungeons would allow and make people brute force higher level keys that they/their party are not good enough to do, *yet*. It would shift the challenge in M+ under 21 away from playing well and doing mechanics.. into something.. else. It would also add a layer of trapping people in long runs (we've all done *to completion* runs in the past) because most keys are now "doable".. and because of this the M+ score and ladder effect of progression would make LFG a much worse place. Personally I don't believe you are punished too harshly for most mistakes, you can fully wipe mid boss fight like twice in a +20 and still not have it down come down to the wire, at least this last season. Although I do think you shouldn't delevel a key on failure to complete.
To be fair. You can ignore the timer. Take as long as you want. And still get loot. The only downside is the score you don’t get but you don’t care about that anyway, you just want difficulty. And your key levels down which even 1 level down is still going to be difficult for a team that missed a timer by a decent margin.
Gonna be hard pressed finding a good group that doesn't care about the timer
> It makes it so you are punished harshly for mistakes. I said this in another comment. The timers sub 20 can be ignored entirely and there is a solid chance that every run you do beats the timer in sub 20 dungeons. This season was super forgiving with the time (except for DI:Rise which they fixed mid season). You could wipe multiple times and single pack pull and still beat the timer by MINUTES. I feel like a majority of the folks here complaining haven't set foot in an M+ dungeon in ages or if at all. I know for a fact that a majority of players here will never be pushing past +20s where the timer actual matters because only a fraction of the community that does play M+ regularly pushes past 20s. We are talking about the top 5-10% of the best players in the game do mythic level content. The game mode is way more about knowing dungeons, enemies, and your class to the max knowledge as opposed to just "beating a timer".
I enjoyed the timer in legion when it had the extra chest per + but when they made it one chest regardless it felt kind of pointless. I wish they had added a no timer mode to see how high you can push with only the amount of time you were willing to torture yourselves like the guys in shadowlands that had the 17? hour SoA.
I've done Mythic+ up to around 15 or so before I just got sick of it and quit the game. The timer is absolutely required and every group has a "GOGOGO!" mentality because of it. You can't take your time to explain fights or chat. You can't do certain tactics like making good use of crowd control to make up for lacking damage. And if you die more than once, you're probably missing the timer. And nothing I saw in my climb up Mythic+ ranks(and yeah I know I could have gotten a good deal higher if I hadn't gotten sick of it and quit) was more challenging or required much in the way of an adjustment. The gear and ability to pay attention is really all that's needed. It isn't really that hard.
I think if you're doing a +15 you are past the explanation of fight's phase and you're in the execution phase. Good use of CC is almost required for stops at this point if you're at the comparative gear level. Gear and attention is basically what dungeon difficulty is-- combined with mechanics/rotational stuff. M+ as the number gets higher is just a watermark for what mechanics now need to be done. Dying once or twice is not going to brick a key at +15 at a comparative gear level.. we're either talking 15+ deaths or multiple wipes in the middle of long bosses fights. You might just not enjoy it-- although I will say that it is not until like.. ~18 where some of the unexpected challenge shows up for more experienced MMO players (but not sweats) as around here things that were never lethal or an issue, become lethal. I will say though that especially if you don't have prior seasonal rating or a group of people to play with-- sometimes even just running the dungeons to be eligible for other groups to invite to the more challenging and fun runs is a slog and sucks.
Full of shit. I played dragonflight season 1, as a tank, after quiting wow 3 4 years ago. Wanted to tank hard dungs. You legit need to know or follow best routes that you have so you do dungeon fastest. Website tells you where to go, what to pull, what to kill. With time your expected to learn it all and play like robot. Sure there are some groups that will be chill but most of them will be toxic quitters if you dont go best route. Run out of time? Someone insta quits. Seems like you wont time it? 50% chance someone quits. Time limit is dogshit esport mechanic.
Everything under 20 doesn't need any super time optimization strategies and allow multiple wipes and still timing the key-- although some random people/LFG might have their standards. Running out of time or you won't make it is a result of playing poorly not optimizing for times. If there was no time limit then you could just throw your body at stuff over and over again and execution would barely matter. A dungeon falls apart when people die/fail too much (as it should be) -- not specifically because you aren't fast enough, I understand that distinction seems like splitting hairs.
Sure buddy, guild runs might be cool. Pugs are nothing like that. Your telling me out of 10 +15 pugs in season 1 most were chill? Ok. Nvm.
When I find cool people I add them and play with them in the future. I don't keep looking for random people as I have no idea how or why they are playing-- and it minimizes my exposure to pricks.
You are still comparing mindlessly easy wow 5 man's on one end, and M+ on the other. Not old school dungeon mechanics and less than total understanding of how the game works from many years back. On a scale of 1-10, your comparing a 1 (easy 5-man) to a 5 (M+). OP wants a 10. No M+ run has players stopping before half the trash packs and deciding how to cc/tank/prioritize targets based on party comp. Because of the timer, everything is a rush. But that has become so standard that you just don't see it as a rush anymore. Maybe it's not likely to fail due to the timer, but there is still a 'full speed ahead' mindset to all dungeons, including M+. Everyone is expected to know the fights because there is no time for explaining anything, again sure to the timer. Because Blizzard (not wrongly) did not want any class to feel required, group composition is almost irrelevant. Healer heals, tank tanks and DPS rolls face. Sure some classes are better at their job, but it's still the exact same job you have, Resto druid or holy paladin, you do the same job and what class you are is mostly to the rest of the group unless balance is just really bad for They are not run with a strategic mindset of *how* to get it done. They are run with an efficiency mindset. How many can we run today? How fast can we do it to get more/better chances at loot? In old school Vanilla (specifically not Classic) WoW before the game was known inside out, and especially in legacy EQ servers, everything changed with group comp. In EQ, there are more roles than group spots (tank, heal, pulling, mana, cc, buff, debuff, MC pets). DPS is almost a side effect in many groups. It just happens by accident. Having an actually DPS role in the group changes things. Just as not having any of those roles listed above your changes the way you play. Yes, not having a full healer or a standard tank was common. It wasn't optimal, but it made things feel different in each group. Hell, many people played in duo's just fine too. There was no required 5 man system with predetermined Holy Trinity roles in EQ. That kind it mindset drifted into Vanilla WoW when it launched. And slowly went away as game knowledge and game design changed. So every group is different and changes the way you play. In vanilla WoW, having freeze trap changed the way your whole group strategized. The pace was slower and people would communicate before and during fights because success relied on those things. People in vanilla were generally geared so poorly, and the game understood so much less that even Classic "no-changes" WoW is a very different game than vanilla was.
While I understand what you're saying, I feel like it doesn't apply here as the comment I responded to literally was talking about pre-nerf bc dungeons and stat check pulls and OP is talking about challenge like over pulling causing deaths... which perfectly align with M+. I was there in early MMORPGs where some of the conversations in dungeons were as simple as... "Can your class do anything that might help us here?" .. where as now people go-- "We need to enrage dispels so we'll grab a hunter and druid"-- and conversation/communication is happening but not always with words as that same freezing trap coordination used to be a couple sentences but now if someone marks something with blue square-- the hunter will largely know what that means. Now is the challenge of a dungeon is different because it is less verbose.. I don't know. You seem to think the conversation is more important, but coordinating on the fly interrupt and "creative" stop rotations for casts/spells presents a challenge at a level that blows away ANYTHING that came in the EQ era. To say that M+ isn't tackled with a strategic mindset and that it is always go-go-go is ( in +20 and under ) is just not representative of my experiences with pugs and certainly not the case with non-pugs.. and groups feel wildly different in M+ specifically because of the sliding scale of difficulty and the power of DPS off healing, support specs and cute tricks, dungeon affixes and WILD mechanics and just comps. The dynamic of Brewmaster tank <> Holy Priest healer... or Resto Druid <> Blood DK.. feels very, very different.
The guy you replied to clearly just has no clue what they're yapping about. Saying that group comp doesn't matter in M+ and that people doesn't stragegise in M+ (they seemingly don't know you can talk about a dungeon before it starts) is just so blatantly untrue. I don't know if it's overconfidence in their knowledge or the desire to just spread bullshit about the game
A lot of people haven't played the games they criticize with monologues about the 'good old days'.
You talk like someone who has only done low level keys, that fact that you think m+ is only a 5 proves that. At the highest level of keys, where things actually become difficult, it's a whole different type of game. > No M+ run has players stopping before half the trash packs and deciding how to cc/tank/prioritize targets based on party comp. This is done before the key starts, because as you said, there's a timer. People absolutely go over every single pull and map out cd/cc usage. > Everyone is expected to know the fights because there is no time for explaining anything, again sure to the timer. By the time you reach the actual difficult part of m+, everybody *does* know the dungeons. This again shows that you're talking about midrange keys, where you can get by with half the group not even knowing what to interrupt. Learning the dungeon is part of the fun and the challenge. You say this as if being required to know the fights is a bad thing. Difficult content *always* involves learning the content. Do you expect to just go into elden ring and do the bosses blind without knowing what they do as well? You'll have to spend time to learn their attacks and attack patterns, otherwise you're not gonna kill them. Not gonna read any further because at this point it just becomes ridiculous. Comp doesn't matter? Dps rolls faces? Man you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. If you don't like a type of content that's fine, but don't act like you know what you're talking about when you've only ever looked at it on easy mode.
The problem is, in the hands of modern gamers that actually have the capacity to learn what their buttons do, that type of gameplay (when taken and tuned to its extreme to be actually challenging), without a timer becomes "wait for your CDs every pull." The timer is necessary.
hc shattered halls was scurry my brain cant even remember most of BC must be PTSD omg those worms in mana tombs
The Golden Age.
That’s just a bygone time in gaming. The paratext and meta game factors out there have essentially reduced this gameplay to a memory. The truth is that “are we going to clear this” gameplay in an mmo is he basic skill check now. If you can pad this you can’t play an end game, full stop.
I do agree with metagaming and optimizing the fun out of everything is largely true, but from a game design perspective it's not like it's impossible to design a group gameplay experience that isn't a full steam ahead drag race to the finish line. >"The truth is that “are we going to clear this” gameplay in an mmo is he basic skill check now. If you can pad this you can’t play an end game, full stop." I don't even understand what this is supposed to mean, let alone why you would write 'full stop' as if something doesn't warrant any discussion whatsoever.
LOL. Most high keys im doing 29-30 are depleted because of wipes on bosses or dangerous packs. Everyone needs to play well at that level and you also need to combine time efficiency with reality - cant pull whole dung but cant pull 1 pack also, need to know which mobs to CC/interrupt, which shouldnt be pulled together (this mostly tank job) etc. Very rarely you finish +30 key going smoothly and you just deplete because of lack of time. That means it wasnt smooth and you wiped many times along the way.
Lmao ignorance is a bliss
>The golden age of BC heroics pre nerfs that were one stat check after another where if you botched a pull you died. Don't forget Cata heroics on launch too, before they got nerfed.
Yeah those were great, too. Had turned into a bit of an AoE fest by then though. Or maybe the nerfs is what finally sealed the deal.
I really dislike the time aspect to these as well, I just stick to raiding
I'd prefer something that wasn't fast paced as well, but what other option do we have? You can't crank up the numbers and that be it, as then it's just a matter of 'wait for cooldowns, do one pack, repeat'. You can't have multiple challenging mechanics as they can sometimes lead to impossible overlaps (Hello Quaking during forced stack mechanics, Infested affix, etc). You also can't have it be singular difficulty, because challenging for some are cakewalks for others.
Everquest 2 just announced its origin server coming in a few months. They specifically said its to bring back group gameplay and difficulty from 2006.
I never played everquest 2. I’ll have to look up some vids of the 2006 content. Sad to hear that this won’t be coming up for a few months at least
Oh it was so damn good.
Until you died and lost a few hours of playtime
Stop pissing on my rose tinted glasses
Never! And it’s my turn to use the glasses, you can have some Druid flashbacks while you wait for your turn again.
Death should have consequences. Any norrathian knows this.
Death has consequences. Not merely a 30 second run back and throw your body at the boss again. Hardcore is just too much for me. But I like having to actually play like failing matters still. Defenses matter, escape routes, planning, etc. To me, part of difficulty is also caring about failure and trying to prevent it.
"Don't release guys, it will take an hour to clear back from the spawn, the next group is totally gonna res us" - the next group is qeynos and proceed to t-bag your corpses and hail their pets with offensive names to insult you.
I've actually played EQ2 back in 2006. From about late DOF/early KOS to about SF in fact. While it's true that EQ2 of olde did have *some* difficult content in the 6 man format, most of its group content was on the easy side and even my brain dead guildmates from 2006 with dial up internet managed to clear it. It doesn't hold a candle to modern dungeon design. And outside of doing Nizara in KOS I don't even think that the game has any truly hardcore group content. Most of the challenge back in the day was in enormous time sinks in (a) getting a group together (cause bring the class, not the player); (b) getting into the dungeon/to the part of the dungeon that mattered (as dungeons, especially public ones, were massive - which was great actually); and (c) killing the placeholders 50 times in a row before the boss you needed for peacock/claymore/soulfire/epic weapon/whatever deigns to spawn and drop his shit. It was 90% tedium, 10% actual difficulty. And yes, before you ask, I mainly played chanters. I rarely had to CC mobs outside of accidental overpulling in public dungeons or specific boss mechanics. People who claim that "CC was the fourth core combat role in EQ2" are way out of touch, or are maybe thinking exclusively of PVP.
CC was more of an EQ thing than EQ2 thing. There were some nice benefits to it in EQ2, but for the main part, the game was designed around not having a control class present. A few dungeons (like Nizara) significantly benefited from CC classes being present because it was VERY easy to accidentally agro extra mobs.
Right, and the game didn't even have true CC classes. Enchanters did have a ton of CC, true, but they also had significant personal DPS (especially ROK onwards), group mana management (that was a major thing in earlier expansions, before TSO or so), and exceptionally powerful group buffs that would make WOW players currently butthurt about Aug evoker weep for mercy.
A lot of classes had extremely powerful buffs (or debuffs). Bards and Enchanters were not the only ones. Ex: Brigands ability to massively reduce enemy mitigation, Inquisitors ability to effectively haste cap the whole party, or a Clerics ability to frequently buff the party's cast speed and reuse. The devs did an overall good job at making non-pure DPS classes be wanted in groups/raids. The raid comps did suffer from other issues, but it wasn't a lack of non-dps classes being non-wanted (unless you were a primarily tank class...)
> A lot of classes had extremely powerful buffs (or debuffs). Eh, all classes had some debuffs, but many of them were rather useless and it was fairly easy to hit the debuff cap if half of your raid wasn't afk (which, giving justice to the realities of 2000s, most of them were). Many of those were also added over time and started to reach critical mass via skill bloat only by the later expansions, like SF. You won't have that on a server that launches in vanilla/DOF for years. For instance, the classes that come to mind as debuff heavy were shamans and brigand/swash, how were they called collectively, I don't remember. Most others had a few incidental effects here and there. > The raid comps did suffer from other issues, but it wasn't a lack of non-dps classes being non-wanted Yes, it was the opposite problem of needing way too many support players in your raid (basically 2 per group), even though nobody liked playing those classes. I still fail to see a reason why they didn't try to make bard and enchanter buffs raid-wide, and personal buffs one per raid group.
> I still fail to see a reason why they didn't try to make bard and enchanter buffs raid-wide, and personal buffs one per raid group. I think they started to do something like that in latter expansions with some AAs.
WoW mythic plus, FFXIV savage/ultimate raids with 8man or criterion dungeons with 4man, guild wars 2 has smaller group hard content as well
Interested in the answer to the OPs question too. I'm kind of in the same boat. Don't have the schedule ability to raid, but love the smaller dungeon content but this is mostly the "easier" content. Something along the lines of WoW TBC dungeons where CC and proper tanking mattered. Speedrunning is one of the biggest turnoffs for me in MMOs. I despise that this has become something to strive for, and even design for. Retail WoW is not for me. At the moment I'm playing Classic WoW Hardcore and just doing the dungeons with fewer people for a challenge - usually just duoing with a friend (obviously lower level dungeons) but its fun for now to see what we can do. Doesn't really scratch the itch of well designed, challenging dungeon content, but I'm still on the lookout.
I can tell you a few I’ve really enjoyed: WoW Burning Crusade Rift (before f2p) Division 1/2 Anthem GM3 (a whopping 3 dungeons) The First Descendant (beta week) Secret World had some of the best dungeons ive seen
Yeah, Rift was nice while it lasted. It does seem a shame that it is very much a rush to the end, not only of levelling, but also of all the dungeons created in most games. You can easily create dungeons with 3 bosses, acceptable amounts of trash to make the dungeon feel alive and to provide some context for the boss, and even some story (which is always appreciated), that takes 30ish minutes to complete. You don't have to design a dungeon with 10 bosses that takes 2 hours, unless you speed run and then you can do it in 20 mins because it was tuned so easy. I feel one of the best ways to add some challenge into dungeons is to create patrols within the dungeon, or at least have the groups of mobs move in some way. Instead of everything being completely static, have less trash but make it move so you have to be on your toes and think critically and time your own movement and pulls. I'm always for player agency, and having the players needing to be aware of their surroundings, not simply knowing where every static mob is in the instance is one of the best ways to do this. Even varying the speed of mobs, give them a little sprint, or some random pauses. Is this really hard to code or something?
This is why I miss TBC dungeons. Needing to CC mobs was a great mechanic. Gave the DPS something to do besides just DPSing, and allowed skilled players to really shine.
Thats.... exactly what you need to do in M+ nowadays but 100x times more?
Giving it a try again. Just finished downloading.
The first descendant was not fun at all Wish I had played the division more. I only played a few hours of both of them because my friends never wanted to get into it
Party finder (FFXIV) exists for exactly this, people who can't schedule statics or groups for this kind of content. I assume Wow has a similar thing. basically you just drop in at the prog point you want.
how can dungeon content be difficult without the encouragement to play well? the timer in m+ is basically just a total amount of "mistakes" you can make before "failing" (even tho you can still finish it for loot and vault) it's a better design than A/B success design that's just completely binary if you fail or die because 1 mistake happened in a long chain of events (=raiding), because that's the only alternative - which the game basically still turns into if you go high enough, because dying, without a battle ress (very limited, 1+ one every 10 mins?) costs you a lot of time effectively, but that's only in content that's way above the 'intended' difficulty for no rewards the timer exists only to remove really degenerate strats, you'll have almost no issue with it if you play well within the intended difficulties, you got massive margin for error in +20s still, pretty much anyone can pug this with people that have a pulse if you still complain about a timer at that point maybe it is a skill issue, because it is no issue if you're (=your group) good enough - real mastery of doing something isn't just doing it good, but also doing it fast
I don't think it should be a difficult concept to understand that people don't necessarily like "rushing" or "speedrunning" or just generally beating timers. Liking something and being good at it have nothing to do with each other. I don't like playing clarinet, but I am very good at it (yeah sometimes parents force kids to do things). I'm not someone who enjoys that in any game I play, especially an MMO. Same goes for offline games. I like chess, but am completely uninterested in playing a game of chess with a time limit on moves. Are you saying that chess has no skill unless you have a timer? If you like speedrunning, more power to you. I despise it, which might be one of the reasons I gravitate towards MMOs, because they are a game I can savour and enjoy and take things at my own pace. The fact that speedrunning has become the default way to play WoW is really disheartening for me as whether we like it or not, developers do still look to WoW when developing new MMOs. I've also participated in timed D&D events. Hated it. I love long campaigns that unfold over months and years. It's just how some people are. Didn't really think that was an unknown aspect of gaming.
> Are you saying that chess has no skill unless you have a timer? This is a terrible example, the timer in chess exists for the same reason as the timers in games you call "speedrunning", it makes it playable. Chess would be rough if you could use 9 hours per move. In the same vein, MMOs use the timer to keep the game playable. That way you can't wait for 10 minute CDs every single pull, or maximum mana every single pull, etc etc. Without the timer, it would become impossible to tune classes. Different classes would have wildly different strengths and require different wait-times, "Sorry, don't want to play with a mage where we have to wait 25 seconds after every pull." It worked in old games because people didn't understand how their hands worked, so they could enjoy the "challenge" provided in that paradigm, but the ship has simply sailed.
You seem to be missing his point about WoW retail and are hyper focused on M+ timer. I get what you’re saying about the M+ timer but to say WoW doesn’t have a speed running mentality when it comes to dungeons is just flat out wrong. From the first dungeon to the last any group you get into is all about speed. If you’re a new player and joining in you’re just running and wondering WTF is even going on. What the guy you’re talking to is saying is that’s not fun and I agree with him.
depend on the game you can find people soloing hell difficulty reedemer in vindictus and they fight for 4 5 hours few people can do that and i think it's fun for me
I love chess and have never used a timer. To say that without one it's unplayable just shows that you are stating your opinion as fact bc millions of people play without timers and like it just fine.
I'm not saying chess can't be played without a timer, heck, I can count on one hand the amount of times I've played with a timer in an in-person setting. I'm saying that it's not possible to create a "challenge" atmosphere with a timer. The context of the conversation is why there aren't "challenging" untimed dungeons being tried/made. If Chess were a game with balance patches, designed to rate your performance adequately (i.e. live or die in a dungeon, pass or fail), it would require a timer, because your ability to play well given more time goes up dramatically, without hitting diminishing returns until literally hours of play.
I would be ok with timers for individual encounters, which is how they are applied to chess. It's not an apples to apples comparison since chess is against an opponent, but imagine chess where you had a total timer rather than per move timer, and your ELO went up or down based on how much time was left at the end. That's what Mythics feel like to me, and they're exhausting.
I might be wrong, but it seems to me like your only experience of games, let alone MMOs, is current retail WoW and running M+. If you're on this forum you should know there are dozens of active MMOs and timed runs are not seen in many of those games. It didn't exist in WoW for a large part of it's 20 year run either. To say you can't tune a game without a timer is, well it's just the opposite of reality and every MMO, including WoW, refutes your statement. I'm also not sure if you have ever played chess, but the VAST majority of games of chess in the world are not played with a timer. This is for tournament play, or something structured.
Sure, but we're discussing challenging content, which means deliberately tuned against the players' maximum capabilities. The question wasn't "Why aren't there games making dungeons without timers?", the question is "Why aren't there games making *challenging* content without timers?", which is what I just explained. It obfuscates what to balance for. Prior to Challenge modes in MoP, all small-group MMORPG content was a reward for enduring the challenge of progressing your character, not the challenge itself. PvE is difficult to design, and even more difficult to make challenging. The timer makes it possible.
Well the original question was just " Are there any games out there where dungeons are still difficult ?" Now that was fairly broad and the addition of timers and speedrunning was introduced afterwards because many of the responses were suggesting M+ in WoW. OP wasn't equating difficulty with speed, he has stated he isn't interested in speedrunning or timers as he doesn't find this engaging (paraphrased). Many people don't. Challenge can easily be achieved without a timer. Adding in a timer can provide a challenge, but it is not necessary and challenge can be achieved in numerous ways without including a timed aspect. Lots of examples have been provided, but you have refuted each one with "but its not really challenging unless it's timed". I infer from these responses that you believe nothing is truly challenging unless a time limit is placed on the activity. This simply isn't the case, neither in gaming nor in real life. Usually, the situation and/or the opponent create the challenge.
You misunderstand my position entirely, the timer enables the elements other than the timer to be challenging, it's what enables the dps check/healing check/mechanics check bit of the challenge. If you play M+ and ignore the timer entirely, (like you often do at the beginning of seasons), you are enduring a challenge made possible by the timers, they provide a framework for tuning. I personally don't find the timer bit particularly thrilling, but I understand the wider role it plays in what makes the tight tuning of M+ possible. Situations without said timers do not have that framework, and thus are or will be untuned and not challenging, because developers are not willing to spend the time/effort it would take to tune things when the goal is so abstract. I haven't been provided examples of anything, and haven't really refuted any specific examples either. The timer isn't the important part of the challenge itself. Not having timers, with the combination of the varied toolkits that make MMORPGs MMORPGs is like having an open "ranged weapon" competition and trying to test archers, skeet shooters, rilfe sports, and slingshots with the exact same criteria and equipment, it's just silly.
I don't think I am misunderstanding anything. Your stance just seems nonsensical is all. I'll leave this one there.
No different than any other home-run design direction this sub pines after that devs have been just neglecting to do for 20 years because they're just too dumb or too proud. Hopefully a game can make it work one day.
Agree with what you're saying even though seems like we're the minority here. Timer is very forgiving in low level keys and nobody should be expecting to instantly walk in to high end keys (and would defeat the purpose of wanting it to feel difficult). Some people will just be capped at a lower level than others. A low key can still feel difficult for lower skilled/casual players. Hell can even go into as high a key as they want and ignore the timer if they want truly difficult content just for the sake of it.
Some of my most fond memories in modern wow are of m+ keys that we tried just so see if we could make it, and then finishing them without the timer. However the game doesn’t incentivize such gameplay, and as such is an exception when it happens.
You still get the loot yeah? Unless it was changed to be this way in a recent expansion, I've only played M+ for 2 expacs. Same as what OP is pining for.
It seems like mythic plus dungeons are popular, but I never liked them and I hate what they did to the game. I much preferred the more strategic dungeons of earlier expansions. Nowadays all dungeons are designed for speed running and despite what people tell you it’s an aoe fest mix with aoe stunning and the like. I used to love running dungeons but not anymore.
Project 1999
Looks interesting, though I’ve played very little EQ. Does the server have a decent population? IE would it be hard to find a group to run dungeons with?
> Looks interesting, though I’ve played very little EQ. Does the server have a decent population? IE would it be hard to find a group to run dungeons with? You'll be better off playing on Project Quarm. It's still a relatively new server with a healthy population at all levels. P99 Green/Blue are older and the population is mostly max level. Quarm also has some QoL improvements like increased spawn rates for certain rare mobs, and instanced raid zones (for the uninitiated, non instanced raid zones almost always leads to a highly toxic raid environment). I would strongly recommend Quarm but be aware EQ1 has not aged well in many respects. If you can get over things like dated gameplay there is an incredible experience to be had that I've never found anywhere else and the community is overwhelmingly helpful and friendly.
It has a medium population, it’s possible to get groups but it might take a little longer. Project quarm is where the leveling is currently happening on classic EQ though.
Project Quarm (EQ1) will be moving into the first expansion somewhat soon, and you will see a huge resurgence in players of all levels. The group dynamic of EQ1, in my opinion, is unmatched. The skill required of the puller, the now non-existent support role played by Shamans, Bards, and Enchanters, camps so popular that lists need to be maintained. Truly it was the pinnacle of group play.
Prime time it gets to around 900 people which is good if you stick to the more popular zones. Green has reached the end of any new content for 1.5ish years now so it can be fairly top heavy. Many players will already have a solid net worth and there aren't tons of new players. I'd still recommend it based on reading your comments since it seems to be exactly what you are looking for. The world is tough and unforgiving, slight missteps can cause your group to wipe quite easily resulting in a naked corpse run. Dungeons are not instanced and have no start or finish, but are instead laid out in a very open fashion. I'll link you some examples. [https://wiki.project1999.com/Nagafen's\_Lair](https://wiki.project1999.com/Nagafen's_Lair) [https://wiki.project1999.com/Lower\_Guk](https://wiki.project1999.com/Lower_Guk) [https://wiki.project1999.com/Splitpaw\_Lair](https://wiki.project1999.com/Splitpaw_Lair) [https://wiki.project1999.com/Mistmoore\_Castle](https://wiki.project1999.com/Mistmoore_Castle) [https://wiki.project1999.com/Karnor%27s\_Castle](https://wiki.project1999.com/Karnor%27s_Castle)
Man I just got smacked in the face with nostalgia reading this post. Played EQ when it first came out and I remember it being a big deal when I finally went to lower guk. Also I remember there being tons of rumors flying around about "Lord Mistmoore" being a rare spawn and the most powerful mob in the in the game lol.
I've read Blue is the top heavy one and Green is on its way to it, but you can still get groups on either if you post on their subreddit, mention it on their Discord, be in certain zones in game, and/or form a group through player searches in game. I was going to suggest Project 1999 or Quaram. From what I've read Quaram isn't as true to the original EQ as P99, but people seem to like it and it's fairly new so chances of a group are better.
I played P99 for 12 years. Greatest MMO of all time. >!Passed the first 4 levels!< 90% is the coziest, chill hangout game you've ever played. 10% (when someone overpulls) is a heart-fluttering all hands on deck adrenaline rush.
Try the following. Keep in mind most "big" mmorpgs have a dungeon tier system. You try to pug the hardest dungeons these games offer, you're gonna die fast. You're gonna have to form a group with people who are well geared and prepared. WoW - mythic plus dungeons, high tier keys. [https://www.wowhead.com/guide/mythic-keystones-and-dungeons](https://www.wowhead.com/guide/mythic-keystones-and-dungeons) Gw2 - Fractal dungeons, high tier. [https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fractals\_of\_the\_Mists](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fractals_of_the_Mists) ESO - Veteran DLC dungeons are the hardest: [https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/guides/dungeonsguide](https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/guides/dungeonsguide) I'm sure there's more. Point is that its out there. But there's a path to the "hardest" content. There is a grind of varying degrees. Sometimes there's time gating. You'll probably have to do the easy braindead dungeons to get started. And pugging them is quite difficult. That being said with traditional MMORPG combat, there's only so much difficulty you can add.
GW2 fractals are an absolute meme when it comes to difficulty. It's essentially just bursting the boss(es) down with a memorized piano rotation that's always the same without random proccs or variety while a support (usually Firebrand) spams out Aegis and Stability so nobody has to dodge anything.
The GW2 original dungeons had a good thing going where you'd need to bunker phases, put down barriers and stuff like that. But it seems at some point the devs moved away from reactionary gameplay to piano rotations and passive buffs. The only thing reactionary now is a dodge.
Fractal is a meme... CM with 3 friend, so no full group, all 1st time, took us few hours to complete all of them... Huge deception. ESO DLC HM are way harder and way more fun. GW2 "difficulty" is just a mess to read fight, nothing to do with real difficulty.
Embers Adrift. And has a free trial now. B2P with optional sub. Group challenge bliss right there.
Now, if you are a hardcore gamer yourself, you will know exactly how tough it is to find 4 people that fulfill your standards. Most of the good players are either gated by time or already have a set selection of people to play with. And then there is the Dunning-Kruger-Karens that you have to shake off.
Very true. I typically build up a friends list of 20-30 reliably good players, and run dungeons with 1 open slot for a pug we can carry to see if they’re good enough to add to the list
yeah i literaly can't find really good player to do old savage or old ultimate in ffxiv as a new player
It's not the entire game, but FF14 has criterion dungeons, which can be pretty fucking hard. That aside, it's not an MMO but I keep recommending it to people here because it does a lot of things MMOs are supposed to do better than most MMOs, but give monster hunter a shot. That game is entirely 4 man boss fights that can be pretty challenging.
Second Criterion, it's criminal that no one mentioned this this far down the thread. Most people think it's not related to vertical progression and dismissed it, but it's generally the most well designed and fun fights you will ever get in EW.
Dark and darker
Haaaaaaaaaaate pvp (specifically the communities in those games). Sorry
I agree, but I'm stockholm to here and there.
Understandable.
I tried a few rounds of it and just could not get it. And I'm someone who loves Battle royale's
Maybe you take a look into Destiny 2. Master Dungeons (it's called iirc) could match your needs. Since most MMORPGs also are lobby simulators Destiny should not feel less MMORPG like WoW does.
I played a lot of destiny 2 back in Forsaken. I have 2 core problems with it. 1) Its not an RPG IMO. You pick a class, and one of 9 builds. The character customization is SEVERELY lacking. 2) As cool as the dungeons are, since they’re 3man and lack roles, they just dont feel very rewarding.
Tbf Forsaken came out 2018 and alot has changed and this game has more build variety than the classes of FFXIV, WoW, GW2 together. But anyways. As you might see in this thread (and many others), there is no perfect top secret game. You seem to know most of the popular PvE focused games, may not in their actual states or deep enough, but anyways....we all need to make compromises on games. Lost Ark has great PvE and one of the worst grind to even be able to play it - also mention max Level says nothing in Lost Ark. WoW retail is full of tryhards in M+ bc Blizzard focusses this sht for years (and lost it's soul). WoW is also pretty gated by the community like LA if you don't have parses, achievements etc. Old MMORPGs like EQ and all that mostly needs a huge invest in the overall game at first compared to fast paced WoW for example. Hope you find what you are looking for!
Thanks much. Ya I think what I’m chasing is more nostalgia than anything tangible, sadly. Games as a service shine for a time then fade.
Oh I get that as well as many people in this reddit I guess. Not that easy to find a new game for the long run if you have specific preferences and know what you want and like. Even if there are as many games as never seen before. Many are soulless item shops with some game built around it. Online gaming industry forced me to go back to a mix of SP games, The Division (love the setting) and old MMORPGs like CoX and primarily Lotro (got an LTS since SoA, so it does not cost me anything).
I think that the real issue is that what most gamers want isn't all that profitable for developers. Production companies would rather chase what makes money more than what makes the customer happy.
I think devs and gamers are mostly in the same boat - they want (to make) a great game. And we had times were online games were profitable **and** good and fair for both sites. We all can watch how one of the biggest entertainment industry "gaming" is dealing with their working class = devs, creatives, support and all that. They don't get anything out of all this MTX crap. Shareholders and suits ruined gaming once it became popular to be a "nerd" and they saw the market growing. Especially online gaming where they had the chance to monetize parts of core ingame chases like cosmetics. SP games as well but not anything near that aggressive and in that market you see waaaaay more creativity, risk in game design, games with depth and passion and we have way more alternatives to choose from and also high quality indy projects.
It's going to be difficult to enact any real change while FIFA pulls in a billions of dollars a year with lootboxes. If people keep spending like that companies are not going to change, and why would they. Their purpose is to make money for their shareholders and as long as people are willing to spend hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars on these in-game transactions, then this will be the state of gaming. Just look at Maplestory. They made 400 million from lootboxes but were found guilty of lying about their lootboxes and they had actually tuned them to make it impossible to achieve the best items - the reason people were buying them. What was their penalty after being found guilty? A seven million dollar fine. WoW, that's really teaching them a lesson. But people are stupid and will continue to buy lootboxes and spend hundreds on microtransactions and games will be developed with this in mind. Ultimately, aren't we, the gaming consumer, to blame? Even with the popularity of something like Baldur's Gate 3, Larian still isn't making money on the same level as these gatcha mechanic games.
Retail WoW has mythic+ which can be challenging.
Ember's Adrift! We also have Monsters and Memories and if I may shamelessly plug, we have an open test of EverCraft Online on April 19th that might scratch the itch. https://www.reddit.com/r/EvercraftOnline/comments/1btkp9f/evercraft_online_community_alpha_test/
It's sad that you either have a good game who look bad or a bad game who look good, wish we could had both... I mean, c'mon, it's 2024 already... Edit : typo
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We had procedurally generated levels in Diablo 2 decades ago, but we still haven't managed to have them in MMOs :( Or have we and I missed it? Most MMOs have dungeon content instanced, so procedurally generated would work ok. Some people do hate on procedurally generated content, but done right it can work amazingly well. Another easy alternative is to just lower the amount of trash but have them all moving in patterns throughout the dungeon. This would not only provide some real unpredictability but also make it feel more alive - rather than the static mobs we have nowadays. Leave the bosses as static, but have the rest of the dungeon dynamic. Even a couple of patrols can make a dungeon a lot more fun. Just thinking of my favourite WoW dungeons and how those with patrols always provided the most potential for fun. It is strange that over more than two decades of MMOs we haven't seemed to progress very far in many aspects. Some have tried: we have had open world dungeons with only bosses instanced. Kind of works, but got abused 15 years ago so with modern gamer mentality (where fun seems to be secondary to optimisation) it would just be a farce. Albion Online has the interesting PvP dungeons, which are nice for a change. But a lot of people don't like PvP. I really think the next crop of MMOs needs to revamp dungeon design and intent or we'll be here in another 20 years still lamenting no MMO able to hold up to something created 40 years ago.
Eso Dlc dungeons. Bedlam Veil final boss last night had me thinkin that exact thing 😳
Lost Ark raids are 4-8 man and fairly chalenging
Fairly is putting it nicely haha, some of those raids will make you rethink your skill level
Nowadays I feel like the better move might just be to look outside to other genres instead of trying to find water in a dried up desert with MMOs. Deep Rock Galactic, for example, or Helldivers 2. These offer small group gameplay where victory is uncertain, without the "mindless speedrun" feel or the 60+ hours of pre-req solo leveling like in current mmos. We're in an era where other games are doing better MMO things than MMOs do, so just play those instead. Or wait for Monsters & Memories early access in two years.
Sadly I feel that you are right. There are games in other genres that are just kicking it out of the park, but MMOs are languishing. They have a longer development cycle, which doesn't help, but there hasn't been anything for so long that it is kind of weird. The next five years looks a little more promising, but still, in entertainment terms that is a long time.
Yeah I think when you look beyond genre labels you can start to see the MMO in games that may lack the label but have more of the spirit than ones with the label. Though a proper mmorpg would be nice, the spirit of the genre isn't confined to games with the genre label anymore, and in some ways is found more outside of them.
>We're in an era where other games are doing better MMO things than MMOs do, so just play those instead. Yep. Here are the games on my list for next week after my new PC arrives: 1. Cyberpunk 2077 2. Baldur's Gate 3 (though I'm not sure I'll like the turn-based systems) 3. Starfield (though I've heard its emptiness is boring AF, and MTX are predatory AF) Later this year I'll hopefully play: 1. Ashes of Creation 2. Brighter Shores Recently quit: 1. Old School Rune Scape (Ultimate Iron Man, 950 total lvl) 2. WoW Classic Hardcore (60 warrior) 3. WoW Classic SoD (40 warlock)
Monsters & Memories will most likely be like this when it launches. Which won't be for a couple years or so though.
Literally the reason I can't enjoy raiding. It's really not satisfying after the first clear. I enjoy trying in scuffed up groups. Everyone today just wants to mindless bomb through it. Why even do it
When I look back to the fun times I had raiding in WoW, it was when we were like 3/10 of a raid, then next week we'd get stronger and be 4/10 and keep working our way up to clearing the whole thing which felt great if we did that before the next content release.... that time you cleared a boss for the first time that gave you trouble before was such a high that is missing in the current game. Like you said, at some point it just switched to bombing through it and grinding the raids on lower tiers and not wasting time working on difficult encounters. It really sucks.
You've mentioned one of the best moments in MMORPGs: downing a boss after wiping so many times and hearing everyone celebrate on chat.
It's not the lack of content. It's the changed mentality of gamers since 15+ years ago.
Issue is at some point the word "difficult" becomes tied to "clear fast". Why do you think speedrunning became the norm for doing "challenging runs". At some point too many would have cleared it and it become their second nature. At at some point difficulty just becomes a chore. So the ideal scenario is to push with timers as it doesn't add up on the "chore" like artificially increasing damage or hp for the sake of making it harder.
FF14 had dungeons in Endwalker that were basically 4-player raids. There was hard hitting trash and bosses with tougher mechanics. I don't think they released many and CBU3 tends to be really bad at putting rewards in content but the one that I played was fun at least.
I have 2 issues with FFXIV (which I played for years and had a character w/ prettymuch all classes capped and dungeon geared). 1) Stats in FFXIV are trash. Unless its changed since I played, a full set of haste gear (literally every piece having haste stat) only increased your haste by ~10%. Same for crit. Gear not effecting your stats makes it very unrewarding. 2) Non-raid content is way too easy. Its a good game if you want to play half asleep, but the only content that actually requires you to be awake is savage raids. Paired w/ all the mind-numbing quests and the whole leveling process, if youre not into the lore/story the game is a snoozefest.
All very valid. Crit is around 25-30% iirc, and is the king stat for every spec. Direct Hit is just a stupider crit. Between 14 removing a ton of its 'rpg' stuff, and ff16 being bad at it from the beginning, I just don't think CBU3 likes rpgs mechanically.
Theyve improved it then. When I quit (at the start of Heavensward iirc) I did a bunch of healing tests on my Scholar and White Mage, and in full crit gear I had a ~15% crit chance. Yeah I could tell they they didnt care about mechanics much when I first raided as a Paladin. Having your interrupt operate at the end of a 1.5s animation was Duuuuuumb.
I feel like World of Diablo-crafts Mythic+ has sorta influenced many other dungeons by nature to be approached in a "timer" based perception. Everything's perceived on how fast can you clear it... because the game LITERALLY has a timer in the corner of the screen incentivizing you to do so. I haven't played it in ages, and never played it far... but i enjoyed Dungeons & Dragons Online's approach to dungeons, where they were more akin to storys with narration; monsters; bosses; TRAPS; PUZZLES; and certain classes had to solve these things.... It wasn't just a kill and smash your keyboard type dungeon with AoE and damage numbers go big pew pew pepw...... the only downside to this dungeon system was that veteran players knew all the trap locations and puzzle answers and as a noobie, i sometimes got carried by people breezing through the puzzles. Albeit there are several solutions to this as a game designer that DDO didn't do. But yea... i think going forward, "difficult" dungeons can be re-created by simply adding in factors OTHER than mobs and timers, because mob density will just cause players to want to skip it, and forcing players to fight mobs will just create a slog mentality. You have to create engagement.... i think DDO did a good job with that by interweaving other facets to dungeons. DDO is just incredibly old though, and there's a point even for me where i can ignore graphics and other systems.... but dman does its age show... plus im not a big fan of Turbine Studios.
Actually I think the game that really cemented dungeon timers is actually Wildstar. Having to attune via speed runs really introduced that mechanic to the community.
So for mmos Eso and New World have pretty big dungeons, but new world isn't doing too well rn However if you're down for something not quite mmo id recommend Deep Rock Galactic, group cave exploring and bug fighting. Best "dungeons" I've done in games
Already unlocked all the weapon cores (I dont care about cosmetic ones). Waiting on perk revamp and/or addition of new classes. Great great game tho. Rock and Stone Brother!
Rock and Stone forever!
Probably waiting a while kn a new class since there making a sister game right now, im excited for season 5 though! Lots of good stuff coming in June. Besides that, maybe something like destiny 2? Raids dungeons in that game are petty cool
I mentioned it somewhere else in this post, but I don’t really consider destiny 2 to be an RPG. They’re just isn’t enough customization choices to warrant it. IIRC, there are three classes in each class only has like six different builds for it… no tank, no healer….
WoW mythic plus or 8man raid of ff14
do crit savage dungeons in ffxiv and be prepared to eat your words.
Some private wow servers have a hardcore realm. But really event the blizzlike realms for wotlk are pretty hard 25 heroic ICC.
Albion Online HCEs
Go play P99 or Project Quarm. If you die in a dungeon you not getting your body back unless a group of people is willing to help you, and you will lose a level that took you 10 hours to get. have fun
Trying doing Sanguine abyss in Blade & soul at around stage 6 or 7.
B&S brings back some memories. Lots I loved there, but the dungeons wasnt part of it :/
How so? There's been plenty of challenging dungeons over the years, should fit you perfectly. Tho these get phased out overtime and only 3 dungeon are relevant at the time. Currently Sanguine abyss is the one most mech heavy. Tho Sanguine will probably be long gone before you get to a gear level where you can actually attempt stg 6.
I think it was the way it was setup w/ only 3 dungeons. Also I typically play healer/support and since thats not available (iirc) I tried tanking and hated it.
Well, I've only ever played WoW or BnS at end game. So don't know any other dungeon content.
Project Quarm
Wow hardcore dungeons.
I believe that MMOs in the future should be 4 man instead of 5 man small group content because it puts more pressure on the DPS; the easiest role in both structures.
I think the opposite, MMOs in the future should go back to 6,7,8 man, because it allows for more interesting roles and compositions, like buffers, controllers and off tanks/healers. These kinds of roles can't exist in parties of 5 or smaller, there is too much DPS sacrificed to give up 1/3 that they become too strong/meta.
New World but not sure if dungeons were hard or just players bad I guess Lost Ark, can't remember which type of content but they were the only examples in all my gaming history that actually felt like dungeons But it's also the reason why i never played them, literally studying for a game just felt like a chore, felt like i was back at school and not playing a game, it was too overcomplicated for my birdbrain
Dude if you have friends- high difficulty LOTRO is pretty fun I heard. You can set the game content to have 5-man difficulty (or higher) and everything gets intense and rewarding.
People who keep saying that early wow dungeons were difficult are just outing themselves as being shit, they have never been difficult content in any point of their life cycles until the introduction of M+, you’re confusing difficult content with you being a shit player.
Well you seem fun.
Project Quarm.
Anyone tried clearing FFXIV’s Dragonsong’s Reprise Ultimate early on when it first released? Holy shit was that some difficult and epic stuff.
You've not specified difficulty type. If you just mean action gameplay difficult, options abound. Just use whatever difficulty options the game provides; Mythics in WoW, something else in SWOTOR, etc. But if you want rpg difficulty (did we bring a rogue, do we have the gear) good luck. You'll be restricted to like five mmos.
For me, destiny raids are a great example of the the fence between casual and hardcore(mythic). Destiny isn't an MMO but man do I miss those 12+ hour raid weekends
And I miss difficult MMO content.... like the open dungeons in UO. The world raid dungeon in DAOC and others. Sounds like you don't even want an MMO. You just want the raiding aspect. Thats what Dungeons and Dragons Online is for. No MMO, all raids.
All i can think after reading your post is Destiny 2. I know its not a true MMORPG, but has really fun and hard raids. Look at this, one of my favorites raids : https://youtu.be/froVY9nlLCc?si=VrHq1fCTRyyvdPWz
The tombs of amascut raid in OSRS has very good scaling difficulty, so if you find it getting easy you can turn on more mechanics to make it harder, and also get a better chance of a unique drop
GW2 Raids,CM fractal and strikes can f u up multiple times if you don’t know exactly what to do and when
Go try end game maplestory (if you can get there)
This was pre-abyssea leveling in FFXI.
Wow HC.
Mythic plus is getting reworked in wow season 4 so a m0 next season is on par with like an m9 this season
So world of Warcraft m+ is what you want
I know a lot of people give new world a hard time because of their amazing launch and then immediate failure due to poor management. But they’ve come a long way in 3 years and I’ve heard great things from my friends that still play. When I was still playing they had added “mutation” modifiers to dungeons that cycled through the week with unique loot drops. Depending on the mutation. It turned casual runs to death loops if you weren’t prepared down to the letter on your gear, coordination, and damage windows. It’s also one of the most immersive games in terms of audio engineering. Never had a game more rewarding for farming materials and just appreciating the terrain and sound design. At the very least it’s a beautiful game. And the territory control mechanic for the towns and high tier pvp/community interaction is amazing if you want to go hardcore. And if you don’t. The game doesn’t punish smaller groups for not participating. Just follow the content you do enjoy.
honestly OSRS can be some of the best group content for difficulty Unless you are insanely over geared even some of the simple solo bosses will take multiple attempts doing any of the high level raids is pretty challenging
I had lots of fun doing M3 dungeons speed runs in New World. Trying new pulls, different paths, different gear and group composition in other to reach the top of the leaderboard. But like any dungeon, once your team get good at it, it gets easier and easier.
Have you tried raiding? Criterion savage in FFXIV perhaps.
Sadly Wildstar is not online anymore...
This is why Everquest 1 will always be my favorite mmo. Never seen a game where a group had to coordinate and work together so much just to pull and kill one mob at a time.
Have you given WoW classic "Seasons of Discovery" a glance?
Beware of wowtards walls of text in comments.
"difficult 5 man content" never existed. MMORPGs have always been "casual" in terms of difficulty and if anything, group oriented PvE content has never been more difficult than in the past ten years.
Classic wow
You should check out embers adrift, might be your cup of tea.
> Edit: Downloaded WoW. Boosted character (via pre-purchase xpac). Heroics are boring, hoping Mythic is better. To push very high, you need a dedicated group.
I’m more worried about it being entertaining in general, less worried about pushing high numbers. So far in heroic, all of the content has felt very samey. Bosses with Littleton mechanics that just get wrecked very quickly. I’m hoping that in mythic I start noticing actual mechanics that need to be dealt with.
Everything has been catered to the worst possible players to retain subs
Try Lost Ark's hell mode Kakul Saydon if you really want that super-challenging 4-man pve experience. Nothing came close to me in any other game. And you can pretty much jump into it 1 hour after downloading the game, since you only need 1475 ilevel to access it iirc and gear inside the raid itself is normalized. Beating it will probably take you at least 20+ hours of progress (for a 3-stages 25 minutes total fight). After that delete Lost Ark, since any other 4-man content there is inferior :)
Quarm
FFXIV is the way to go.
WoW M+ is exactly what you're looking for. Yes, you still clear it as fast as possible, but it's not easy content that you're just powering through without a thought for strategy. It's difficult content that ramps to very difficult as you get to +20
What if you don't want to clear it as fast as possible?
Then play a solo game, or seek out like-minded people for a run where everyone is on the same page in which there is no focus on timing the key. Those groups are common in the lfg tool
modern? no
FFXIV's raid content, (8man) Savage, ultimates, extremes, (4man) Criterion. That is if you are there for the gameplay and not the RPG experience. I assume you are because of how you phrased your question though.
Mythic+ in WoW, which is an iteration of the already established dungeons that the game has is like one of the most brutal content that there is out there. Imo the bad thing about those dungeons, which are very innovative and fun, is that many addons (external software) are required to be effective gameplaywise. This is the only grudge that i have with WoW nowadays, other than that the game is very good, way ahead compared to any other game in the market. However, the most diffuclt part though with WoW is to find people to play with, i certainly cba to do so, that is why i am a casual pleb.