What can MMOs Learn from Elden Ring?

Everquest players want a "hard game" they want a "souls like experience" at least, according to some of the people making the MMOs via this PCGamer article: www.pcgamer.co...
And with Elden Ring's DLC first drawing rave reviews, then being accused of being too difficult, then going back to rave reviews along with the base game of course being a Game of the Year...it got me thinking:
Is difficulty, or more specifically, challenge or time investment resulting in a sense of achievement key to making an MMO stick ?
And if so, is it possible to go too far? To be too difficult?
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[@Turtleshellon]

I’m an 80 baby that grew up on Nintendo. A friend of mine told me about EverQuest and I loved it from the very first moment I logged in. It was nothing like the MMO’s of today. Back then there was a sense of danger. You didn’t just run through the woods by yourself, or you could die. When you ran into enemies, you were generally scared. If you saw a dragon or some big mob, you would run like your life depended on it. There was so much teamwork and communication. Games today hold your hand. Tell you where to go, don’t care if you die, can kill almost everything by yourself. To kill something by yourself in EverQuest, you had to have certain classes that could kite an enemy. Like a Druid because they had a aoe snare that could slow enemies down and you run away and attack them. These new gamers don’t even know what kiting is because they can stand toe to toe with pretty much anything. Run through zones freely. Get instructions on where to go next, etc. in EverQuest, we had to figure everything out. It was a constant challenge, while being in constant danger and I loved every minute of it.

[@thanganbabp5570]

the key to the balance in your video is in bringing back levelling as part of the game. you can bridge that difficulty gap by making the learning curve a ramp rather than a cliff

[@Redbeardflynn]

I loathe the current meta of Easy for 90% of the game which takes 10% of your game time so you just sit and run the same raids and groups over and over at the end where there's a steep mountain of difficulty.

[@rynejones8513]

yeah i dislike how the new stuff is a mad rush to max level and then devoid of content

[@pipz420]

I want to see things ramp up yes but I also do not want to wait 60+ hours before I get cool stuff and experience endgame quality content. The first 40 hours should be badass and give me enough abilities to have strategies and enough content to have optional battles to do besides just leveling. I'm not asking to have lvl 10 in 20 minutes, I am asking to get quality heals and debuffs to make combat exciting.

[@Zhiroc]

I think you said it correctly at the beginning that not everyone plays/enjoys games for the same reason. But you also later focus a lot on the "overcoming challenge" aspect of games and MMOs. You are correct, but only for the segment of gamers who value that. Just like there are people who hike mountains looking for the next challenge, there are others who just like the aspect of walking and don't particularly care for (or want) difficult terrain. I think I could describe the difference as being between being goal oriented vs looking for an experience. I now sit firmly in the latter. I never play single-player games at harder than normal difficulty. I will sometimes play at easy/story. And sometimes, if I really just want to get to the end of a game's story (which is rare these days), I'll even turn on in-game cheats, like I did in Control. I'll never play a souls-like game, because that's just not what I enjoy.

[@ChaosSlayerZX]

Early years of EQ2 and WoW had that perfect balance of difficulty where solo, group and raid people all could found their own game to play. Then they made things just WAY TOO EASY

[@pipz420]

I dont know what you are talking about. WoW was clowned for being way too easy and dumbing down the genre. Things are easy because of WoW and EQ2.

[@Parnyr]

I would agree. At least for EQ2. We started playing with Rise of Kunark and yes, you could play it solo with lots of kiting and waiting etc, but it was doable. Of course it was meant to be played in at least a party of two. For us it was perfectly balanced until they added the massive OP Mercenaries. If only they had made them less OP...then it woul have been a good ad for the solo players...

[@eatonaround]

Really solid talk about your view on what difficulty means to different types of players. It is a very complicated thing and I don't envy game designers in trying to find the right mix for their games. Good listen/watch here.

[@Redbeardflynn]

Thank you very much for the kind words!

[@jasonmiddleton920]

Solid. So many great points too. I think you nailed exactly what many newer MMOs are missing.

[@fizzybenderson]

I also believe that difficulty should be more than HP/Defense/Attack. Better AI routines to stun, swarm and CC

[@OneFiveYankee]

"Difficulty isn't just quickfire reactions and dodging." This is exactly why I quit mythic raiding and World of Warcraft in general. Getting to the end game and gearing was so easy. I didn't feel any investment in my character. There was no fear and therefore no wonder in the open world. Repeating a mythic encounters mechanics dance became an exercise in muscle memory and didn't feel good. Especially since the reward was more or less just a parse on some obscure website. I honestly can't play modern MMOs for this reason. Edit: I played on a bard on Rallos Zek, and would routinely help people with corpse runs using Selo's Song of Travel. It was one of my favorite things to do.

[@nimrylchee8796]

I agree with this video. I also think (personal opinion) think that depending on how hard a mmo is effects its player base/community. I've found that in an easy mmo (you'd think this would be opposite) that God complexes form. When everyone thinks their a God, they become arrogant, intolerant of failure and toxic. And when a mmo is hard the game turns to humble/polite co-operation which reduces toxicity and improves that social experience/community.

[@Redbeardflynn]

In a weird way I'm both for and against harsh death penalties for this reason because on one hand a harsh death penalty adds to a sense of fear, on the other hand it can lead to toxicity when a group wipes because it sets them back. But, I've noticed the *exact same* toxicity in games with no death penalty, the "easy mmos" that I believe you're referring to. Its interesting.

[@nimrylchee8796]

@@Redbeardflynn i have seen people get upset over a death in EQ, but its atleast for a valid reason. I'd say it was rarer than people getting annoyed in "easy mmos". You have much more investment in the group.

[@burnedraventales6030]

I agree the right difficulty is important, hardships are what make people come together, humans by their very nature band together to overcome difficult times which is how friendships and communities are made

[@RekitRogue]

Great Video brother, I've been playing Project Quarm EQ and recently just did a video on my thoughts and love for the game, and mention that for me, EQ's grind and lack of hand holding gives me that same brain burr that I recieve from beating a souls boss. MMO's are a battle of attrition and the best if them usually require a slow and patient hand to master. Im not sure if there is a magic formula for balance, pacing, onboarding and difficulty. But I like where your heads at and can agree with your passion for mmos and the hope for my favorite genres future. Thank you for the upload Red. 🙏

[@RonOnTheWay]

EQ2 actually moves the wrong way. You grind hours to get a level, you get no useful rewards and you even need drops for your spells to make them decent. There's no reward for playing that game lol

[@RekitRogue]

@@RonOnTheWay Ummm Okay, Project Quarm is a classic EQ1 server. Not sure if you replied to the wrong comment lol.

[@Galvaire00]

I fully agree and I think striking a perfect balance here is hard, however there are actions that can be taken to make the game appealing to different crowd (difficulty-wise) and I believe LOTRO kinda went that way which was a fantastic decision and I really hope other MMOs would take note. Adding the ability to scale the difficulty of the world can drastically improve the game experience for those that want challenge. A bit more HP, a lot more damage done and a growing list of additional skills/attacks/statuses that gets progressively harder the more you pump up the difficulty. I personally dislike when the difficulty is not there or it's just based on "it's gonna hit harder and have a huge HP pool", I really, really want the mechanics to get trickier, harder, force you to pay attention. I really hope Ashes of Creation will cater to that. Time will tell I guess.

[@Greenlantern957]

I’m enjoying the origin server on EQ2…but I recall my buddies and I when it came out originally how stupid easy it was compared to EQ…

[@Sondi]

Been saying this for the longest, the leveling process should be just as difficult as the end game content. I shouldnt have to slog through boring fetch quest to get to max level..once im max i should be amply prepared for the endgame. Thats why you see a lot of people not even knowing the mechanics or even what their class role is in dungeons

[@thewintersteiner]

Sick intro 👌🏻

[@Redbeardflynn]

Thank you so much! That Elden Ring music goes hard with Everquest...

[@Central_Media3656]

What worked for EverQuest back in 1999, wasnt just the difficulty, it was the sense of a living breathing world, players that werent in instances, numerous races/classes, and a world to explore, along with smaller, more intimate dungeon groups (NOT RAIDS with greedy, bossy people dictating the whole thing, thats a JOB, its not fun) finding a PUG to go raid MM Castle was FUN, being a part of a guild with 500 no-lifers making the game become WORK is not FUN....there is a fine line between difficult and tedious. Elden Ring just managed to fall on the right side of that. It was close tho, I finished the game, got 300+ hours of fun out of it, but it was a bit much at times. Corpse Recovery is fine, but there has to be other ways to get your stuff when you die,. 3 hours into a dungeon crawl. Pay a level of XP, a bunch of gold, and an xp penatly for the next 48 hours gametime for example. If I got work in the AM, I am not spending 4 hours hoping my group can all stay on so we can do a CR. again its a fine line. EQ nailed most of it back in 1999...since then? not so much. One last thought, there hasnt been a good MMO in quite a while. and WoW was never good. JUST IMO.

[@rept7]

I pray something comes out that does difficulty balance correctly, if not at least in a way thats more "my thing". The fact I can't think of a single PvE MMO or MMO-lite game thats day to day gameplay can be more than just "faceroll easy" is highly concerning.

[@pipz420]

Final fantasy 11. People forgot so much of the past we fail to learn from the past to make new games. We are doomed to repeat the failures of the past because of it.

[@adamkinne6467]

So I don't think super difficult is really that important. I played wildstar and it was very difficult. I remember the first time doing dungeons it just cut so many people out of the game. They just would quit because it was easier to replace them than to teach them. After getting kicked out constantly they would quit the game. Elden Ring difficult doesn't really work for MMOs. The challenge is working together. Imagine having to have 20 players all play elden Ring at the same time and if any one of them failed to kill the boss you all failed. This is a challenge but makes people hate the weakest people and doesn't promote friendship and working together. Take PVP MMOs. The worst players will hate getting stomped and quit. Now the new worst feels the same and quits. It goes right up the ladder till only the elite remain and there aren't enough of them for an MMO.

[@Redbeardflynn]

Cheers! Thank you so much for your great comment. Super difficulty definitely doesn't work. I think Elden Ring was a good game to point to because its created in a way that its playable by a much larger audience with arguably the hardest base game boss (Malenia) being optional, but beyond that there are ways to use different things to make the game more approach able like two different types of summons, leveling and grinding on easier things, an open world that lets you choose how to progress...etc. There isn't just a single level of challenge but multiple different levels of challenge, some of it just being silly easy like one-hit killing enemeis. It mixes challenge + reward and that balance is what's needed, imo. The key ingredient though to me is time investment and a sense of achievement. If an MMO gives you everything immediately, you have no connection to the MMO. The pvp part of it? It's a mess imo. I think there's a reason why PVP MMOs don't really work but thats a topic for another video :)

[@adamkinne6467]

@@Redbeardflynn you should make a video about PVP MMOs

[@Redbeardflynn]

@@adamkinne6467 I've been planning on it for a while, I just want to do it justice.

[@brianross9926]

Agreed. You have to have difficulty as part of your game or it feels pointless and has no longevity. I like a good grindy game as long as the grind part has some incremental enjoyment to it and isn't overly tedious with things that just feel like a pain in the butt waste of time. Everquest nailed the guild/group challenge type of game and Elden Ring nailed the solo challenge. But, man, as I start to get into the later expansions on EQ (mischief VOA right now) some of these raids are sure starting to feel rather tedious with pages and pages of mechanics. Every raid night feels like learning an encyclopedia worth of mechanics and that my DPS class hardly ever does what it theoretically is supposed to do because of nonstop mechanics. 🤪

[@darkwulf2k]

I have played a lot of MMO's, and to date Classic WoW and FFXIV have achieved probably the closest to perfect balance of hard, and easy. Yoshi P did say FFXIV had gotten a bit on the too easy side, so they were going to up the difficulty in Dawntrail, and i think they did a good job of upping it while keeping it accessable. I am really curious how the first raid tier will be in FFXIV when the raids drop this week, and savage in two weeks. I felt so good when i managed to clear the first extreme trial raid in FFXIV this past weekend because i felt rewarded for putting my time in to clear it.

[@jamiehav0k62]

@@darkwulf2k ffxiv a balance? Outside of extreme instances and end game.. anywhere in the overworld that you spend the majority of time in, it's basically a walking sim. As soon as they make normal content a little harder everyone starts complaining. It's pretty baffling.

[@dragonsyph2557]

NO footage of the thumbnail with SLEEPER????

[@Redbeardflynn]

😭 they're all awake! (and I'm too low level for the 2nd sleeper)

[@dragonsyph2557]

@@Redbeardflynn haha, fair enough , brings back good memory’s of running in and dying over and over as over lol.

[@sincity197600]

It isn't just about making the game difficult. Elden Ring has tight controls that puts success or failure in the hands of the player. I don't the comparison translates well to a tab targeted multiplayer game focused on repeating content. It's not that I don't think there are lessons learned. It's just not as simple as "make it harder". I think the MMO DNA needs a rework. But most MMO fans are more interested in moving backwards rather the forward. And there is a market for that. But it is the relatively small EQ crowd, not the Elden Ring crowd.

[@wudookid]

Spending X amount of hrs to improve skills in certain game for me personally is much better experience (especially in any online game or "hardcore" game) that motivates me to come back to game at any point and still enjoy it after short or huge breaks. However spending the same X amount of hrs to achieve certain "power level" because it's locked behind grind with additional RNG layers doesn't motivate me to come back to game even after few hours break. MMOs need to re-consider the whole game design, game loop and concept in general to survive upcoming 5-10 years. If we just gonna keep getting WoW clones - say goodbye to such a genre. Social aspect alone isn't enough anymore to convince people to play MMOs. Grinding for gear or certain achievements doesn't motivate anymore because people have real life and way too many games to play besides "that chosen one MMO".

[@CoreChamber]

Latency kills complex combat for MMOs. Hopefully, MMOs like AOC or Star Citizen make some advancements in this area. Current MMOs let you top out too fast, which is when they become less fun; it's all about the journey. Then, it destroys all feelings of accomplishment by selling time and challenge skips. Or Krono is killing the EQ TLP server's social community by making botting more affordable. Games like WOW are now more about tagging a mob before it's killed other than surviving a mechanic. Time investment must be rewarded instead of being limited to dailies.

[@RonOnTheWay]

You have to separate difficulty from tedium. Nothing difficult about it taking several hours of grinding to get 1 level.

[@Redbeardflynn]

Agreed.

[@Nickelback8469]

Not only do I dislike the endgame rush that most modern MMOs seem to push, but I dislike the ARPG focus or ability bloat style combat. Maybe a Classic EQ styled combat would be too slow for modern audiences, but I miss the more strategic use of only a handful of abilities with resource management. Early SWTOR and ESO were decent about that, but WoW and FFXIV were way too bloated and I hate having to cycle through 30+ abilities and I hope future MMOs can find a better balance.

[@GuloGulo_Gaming]

MMO Devs definitely have a lot to learn from games like Elden Ring. One of the biggest lessons I would point out is to sometimes NOT listen to your community. Players will ask for things like "quality of life" features that will completely break the game that the devs are intending to make.

[@pipz420]

I think you should rethink how much QoL things there are in elden ring. Mounts,fast travel, maps, grace to show you the way, and quest markers.

[@GuloGulo_Gaming]

@@pipz420 Hence why I said "sometimes". I am not saying they should never listen to the community, but when they ask for something like a difficulty slider, set a boundary. Not all QoL features are bad or bad all the time. If you build your game around these things they can be incredible. FromSoftware has been doing a great job of this and IMO other developers, studios, publishers, and investors can learn something.

[@gamongames]

this video is so unstructured and strung along I spent over five minutes waiting for some weird intro bit to end and the actual script to begin before realizing this is just the way the video was gonna be it literally sounds like youre building up to a point, continuously adding tangents as examples, but it never concludes, just morphs into a new discourse and you only realize it retroactively a few minutes later that you dont know where it was going. it feels like listening to those musical harmonic scales that trick your brain into feeling like the notes are going up forever I have no idea what you even said for most of it and honestly, not inclined to watch it again to find out

[@Redbeardflynn]

Duly noted!

[@billbrown69]

I don't know that a proper hard game can survive like that anymore though because of the overwhelming crying "it's too hard" things ultimately end up getting nerfed to oblivion. Dark souls is more the exception rather than the rule. Even on eq2 origins there's loads of moaning how hard it is. I just don't know anymore.

[@Redbeardflynn]

There's gotta be a balance, I think, as well as a decision of what the game wants: Pass-through players or players who stick. A game like Lost Ark is a prime example of pass-through, 1.4 million or so tried it, 1.3 million left it. But from a money perspective that .1 is probably still providing them what they need. I think you also *have* to have a solo path in 2024. It can and should be much less beneficial than the group path but if you force someone to stop progress completely unless they have someone to play with that can make people leave. Don't get me wrong, though, I think MMOs should be social but making it attractive to be social rather than forced is an important distinction as the genre has matured, even if that path is 1/5th or 1/6th as efficient, and it can still be difficult for that solo player!

[@zombiejesus7445]

I miss WildStar

[@Central_Media3656]

you might be the only one.

[@zombiejesus7445]

@@Central_Media3656 that's cold! WildStar was amazing

[@zombiejesus7445]

@@Central_Media3656 did you play it?

[@Central_Media3656]

@@zombiejesus7445 no...never heard much positive about it tho

[@crowt244]

i hate all Souls like games. im more of an EQ kinda guy

[@Redbeardflynn]

They both reward time investment and difficulty, thats the main takeaway (not combat style)

[@raeshalgoul8505]

Enjoyed the video. In gaming, you have at tops 20 to 30 minutes to give gamers a reason to hang around and see what's next. If not, then not see you. No, see you take care.👍✌ RBF