The Daily Grind: What sort of challenges feel fair in an MMO?

Fair: swarms.

unfair: mechanics breaking end game "god mode".

swarms = clearing wave after wave of realistic enemies as a trial of endurance, even if it's dealing with 5 bosses at once just so long as those bosses don't take 100 players to kill.

God Mode = shit like one hit kills, or mage/tank types that have are thick as bricks AND fire nukes ... and those are just the normal mobs.

For me that depends on the MMO. If I'm playing a more action-oriented MMO the challenge should definitely lie in positioning and timeing. In a slower paced MMO the challenge should lie in having a good strategy.

Guild Wars does it well since all the fights have a little something. Some mobs will AoE like mad, so you have to manually split up your force, but the biggest part of it all is build make up. If you're going to clear Frostmaw's Burrow, you better not bring any spells/skills that deal Cold Damage, and actually bring fire spells. Certain boss fights do require you to move around, but those are extremely rare.

WoW has it half-right imho. The whole "move out of danger" thing, while often hated by people, is one of the best mechanics you could use in a MMO to keep people on their toes. The only problem is that they need to remove the predictability and make them more epic. "Oh no, the dragon is channeling Tail swipe (5 seconds cast, you see the animation of the tail slowly lifting up), everyone should move away. The boss could cast it a couple times in a row if he wanted. Basically, the Lich King fight had it right, but those kind of fight should be more common and truly epic fights like Deathwing or whatever his name be a memorable thing.

I am talking 10-15 mechanics, and no "Learn it in one shot" thing that everyone does. IMHO a group shouldn't step up to a fight and expect to succeed it on the first time because they read a strategy. They should experience defeat and strat themselves up from the defeats they had.

Anyway, that's just me, I don't like how the lowest denominator is used to make instances (See: Nerf to all heroics in WoW Cata).

Oh, btw, LOTRO had it right, as usual, it's just not popular enough. While the class uses a holy trinity, a non-tank can still take quite a few hits. In instances (50+) bosses each have several mechanics, and even if you learn them by heart, taking down a boss takes trial and error for everyone.

Example: Forges of Khazad-dum.
First boss, he runs up to you and starts cleaving at you, the tank picks him up. Meanwhile, a goblin in a tower randomly throws down bombs that leave fire patches that must be avoided. Sometimes the boss will call out your name and you have to break Line of sight from the boss to survive. After 45 seconds or something, he starts summoning monsters, which must be deal with or the next time the boss calls out a player, those mobs receives a damage boost.

Boss #2: A goblin(boss) with 2 giant troll bodyguards. If any of the giant trolls are slain, they are instantly revived and it heals the boss for a huge chunk of his HP. If any of the giant trolls are in range of the boss, the boss receives massive defensive bonuses.
So basically 1 or 2 players have to kite around the giant trolls on a huge map, without killing them, while others focus on killing down the boss. The boss uses a variety of ability (A called PBaOE that you must run away from, patches of oil that slows down Attack speed by a lot).

Boss #3: Nothing spectacular with that one, he does apply a powerful Fire dot that you must pot out, but he's more like a mini-mini-boss.

Final Boss: You stand on a square platform surrounded by lava. Most of the platform is taken up by a huge square structure in the middle, the Forges. The boss starts with 2 trolls, once again, if the trolls are alive, the boss can't be slain. The trolls can be killed here. After the trolls are dead, he'll start calling out names, if you attack him while you're called out, he'll dodge and counter you for huge damage. He randomly sets himself immune to certain elements, so have to watch out for that.

He'll call 1, 2, 2 trolls periodically at 75%,50% and 25%. The fun part begins at 75% when the forges are ignited. Huge flame jets will start being spewed out of the tower so you must fight the boss while running in circle around the tower with very minimal movement place. The trolls and bosses have AoE stuns and AoE damage, so you have to keep ahead enough so you don't get stunned into the flames, but you can't clump up together or everyone gets hit and your healer won't like this (PS, they run out of power extremely quickly in LOTRO).

For me, it depends on the game, the group size, the time needed for a successful run, and how much I know/like my partners.

For solo content, I'm happy with almost any kind of challenge, as long as, after some training, I can beat it at least one time each three tries. It must be theoretically possible with a 500ms internet latency, though, in order for me to consistently be able to tackle it.
(It's worth mentioning, though, that it's often possible for developers to compensate for network latency even for challenges where very strict timing is needed.)

For group content with friends, I'm happy with fairly step challenge - although not as much as I accept for solo play - and some learning curve; after the required training, for me to not be frustrated, we should be able to beat the content at least two times in three.

For group content with strangers I'm not really willing to have a learning curve, or at least one that needs more than one play through of the content; and the success rate better be close to 90% or so, depending on the time required to beat the content - things that can be beat in 15 minutes or less can be more difficulty, while content that needs multiple hours better have a success rate very close to 100%.

There is a trick that can be used to better handle the learning curve for group content, though: moving part of the learning curve to solo content, kinda like WoW's Aces High daily that taught players how to fly the drakes for Malygos third phase. It reduces the frustration of wiping due to players that didn't understand the content, at least if they do their "homework" and use the solo content to learn.

Of course, the above is my opinion. Some players thrive on getting a group and banging their collective heads against a barrier; for pug content at least (and, to some extent, content for pre-assembled groups), I'm not one of those.

Strategy over execution. Always.

If you have a good strategy, you should be allowed to make a small mistake or two and still get through it. But if you have a bad strategy, you should get fisted every single time. Fights were a single mistake, no matter the degree, results in failure are always not fair and not fun.

However, the fights then need to be designed in a way where there are multiple strategies that can be successful. Raiding in WoW was always killed by knowing the fight before hand, knowing the strategy beforehand, and just going in and executing it. Where's the fun in that? Let's take our time, explore some different options, and maybe do something a little off the wall. Let's be creative and let's allow ourselves to be surprised. Then we can see who the really good raiders are.

Unfortunately, WoW doesn't have that sort of mentality, nor is it setup to facilitate that. This is primarily why I'm excited for GW2. Strategy and creativity are awarded to a greater degree than just going through the motions and you aren't going to be blasted if you don't approach the fight the same way as Paragon or whatever bleeding-edge guild that made the first fight video.

i like the way done in ffxi
usually the boss chooses one of his abilities at random

i never liked the wow way where the bosse uses same abilities in certain order.
i know not everyone like difficulty spikes on the same boss but that how i prefer them.

Dante Must Die?

He's already dead...

http://images4.fanpop.com/image/photos/16000000/DMC-devil-may-cry-5-16016910-1000-563.jpg

The most important thing is that the game needs to let you play your character. If your character has a sword and shield, you have a right to expect that character to be somewhat harder to kill than others, and to fight within melee range. If you have a bow and arrow, or a ranged spell, you should be able to avoid being caught within melee range.

The best game like this has been classic City of Heroes, which at least until recently did an excellent job at just letting you play your character. As a result, team composition was seldom an issue. Teams of eight tankers, eight defenders, or eight dominators can steamroll most of the content in very different but equally effective ways. Because like in all MMOs the content itself was rather repetitious, the fun was all in creating different characters and concepts and seeing how they worked, finding the ones you enjoyed. The focus always was not on learning the boss encounter, but on learning how to use your own abilities to best advantage. In other games, this is the first thing I miss.

Gimmick fights always mean that someone is at a disadvantage. The team would do better if that someone's character were replaced with another that works better in the specific encounter. Since these games also tend to be gear dependent, and therefore require players to focus on a handful of "mains", encountering a gimmick designed to neuter you means you may as well not have come. If you get past that boss and on to the next, it's because of the grace of your teammates rather than because you really had anything to contribute. I hate that.

If your shield is ineffective against the boss's damage, you may as well not have brought your sword and board character. If you're always having to run out of melee range, may as well not have brought your barbarian type. If your complicated spells are always being interrupted by the need to hop from one square to another, your caster needn't have come. I've even seen a gimmick that involves a debuff that turns your healing spells into damage on your team. All of these gimmicks devalue specific characters and turn them into charity cases on that fight. This is where I start losing interest in games.

Any encounter of a nature that people feel a need to resort to voice chat, UI addons, or scripts to manage the gimmicks ought to be reworked so that none of that immersion breaking junk is necessary. Your character needs to be allowed to play. And your attention ought to be focused on your own abilities and how to use them, rather than voice chat or scripts.

I think before you can have a clear discussion about challenge, you need to be able to distinguish challenge, from difficultly.
Anyone can make a boss the is tough and hits really hard, or send wave after wave of overpowered mindless mobs at you.

Challenge comes from the learning curve that scales difficult based on experience and personal skill, rather then equipment, stats or level.
The best kinds of challenge allow for the player(s) to learn during the challenge, giving anybody the chance to overcome said challenge on the first run though, as it tends not to be a matter of weather or not you win, but by what degree.

For example, anything from the Monster Hunter series.

Yian Kut-Ku is an early game boss monster.
It is both easy, and challenging. It's attacks are wide, slow, and clumsy, any player can easily dodge them IF they are paying attention, or have experienced them once before.
But even experts make mistakes.

In addition, it nether hits hard nor can take much punishment. However, it can still kill you if you don't learn to avoid it's attacks, and killing it quickly depends on knowing where to hit. (it's head)
Not knowing these things will only draw the battle out much longer then it needs to be, but isn't likely to kill you.

Compared with such monstrosities as Nagacuga, who's attacks are faster, far reaching, and quite damaging, as well as being fast and tough overall, she is much more difficult and unforgiving of mistakes.
However, while being much more difficult, it is still quite possible to win if you take your time and think about what your doing.

There is not 'I win' button. You either learn, or you die horribly.

Dante Must Die. Sounds almost like a rehash of Dragon's Lair in a way. Oh the quarters I dropped ^_^

Unfair? Maybe mmorpg's that use free-for-all pvp throughout the entire game world. But most devs already know this. It's not very realistic, really.

Best suited form mmo's would be faction warfare :D ...though few devs put real effort into designing it :( (ode to the old days of SWG pre-CU/NGE)