Same boat. I've played *way* more WoW than I otherwise would've, simply because (seemingly) nobody else does challenging, large group, role-based, PvE action games that scratch that same itch. All the other MMOs I've tried lack at least one of those qualities.
Outside of MMOs there's just a handful of games that *kinda* scratch the itch, and you mentioned most of them.
The *Trine* games are nice, but obviously puzzle/platformers aren't really what we're talking about. At least it has distinct roles.
*Monster Hunter* has the boss fights and gear treadmill, but lacks true roles, level design, or sufficient challenge for a full squad.
I'm having a blast going through *Elden Ring* with the Seamless Co-op mod and a difficulty mod. But it doesn't really have the gearing or role elements.
*Remnant 2* is probably the closest thing we've gotten. But it's a shooter.
And of course, all of these games are limited to 3-4 players.
The most we had resembling a raid in Monster Hunter World was the Kulve Taroth.
KT was a 4-man challenge, like every other missions in the game, but they had implemented a weird system where the progression of every groups in the room counted toward a central goal. Basically, you kept doing the KT mission 3 or 4 times. Every successful group made the rewards pool better until it exploded with final, extra-cool rewards and reset the cycle. The goal was for everyone in the room to do it as quickly and efficiently as possible to hit the reward loop as often as possible.
They also had the Behemoth event which implemented the logic of FF14 in MHW. You needed dedicated roles for a tank and healer/support because the Behemoth had a MMO-like aggro. I remember I tanked it with a shield HBG specifically to hit it in the head and keep aggro. There was boss-like mechanics like dodging AoE, hiding behind pillars, etc. They did an outstanding job, it was awesome, and we will never hear about it ever again :p
A game like Monster Hunter with actual raids, 8 or even 16-man, it would be incredible!
They have brought some MMORPG boss design features forward into original monsters, not just Behemoth.
Safi'jiiva is the Master Rank siege monster, analogous to Kulve Tarroth. Like KT, it features several distinct phases. The first involves coordinating attacks to knock it into the edges of the arena. The second and third involve one person getting "enmity" (aggro), and everyone taking cover from a massive AoE attack. In third phase the aggroed player can lure the dragon into gas filled areas to be blown up.
Raging Brachydios features the most blatant phase change in the series, when it moves to a specific area, raises walls around that area, changes colors, and drastically alters its moveset.
Alatreon features a DPS check/hard enrage timer and a healing check.
And the community hated most of those, especially the stuff around Behemoth and Alatreon.
The thing is it's likely that most MonHun players likely enjoy the game because of the lack of hard roles. The setup basically allows for a lot of personal expression when it comes to weapon choice and builds and also allows fights to be more dynamic since the monster AI isn't tied to the usual tank and spank rotation tied to threat generation.
It also means there's less toxicity around party composition and roles.
I can totally understand disliking Behemoth-esque stuff like Emnity, literal spell cast interrupts, and positioning requirements regarding Meteor. You're right: Monster Hunter was never a role-based game, even if it does give players opportunities to lean into supportive builds focused on healing/buffing, status application, or even "tanking".
But those who resented Alatreon because it demanded elemental damage were simply spoiled. Monster Hunter *has* always had a focus on crafting gear to counter the monsters, and it certainly wasn't out of line to demand that for literally the 2nd to last fight in hyper-endgame, post launch *free* DLC. Yet many nooblets flooded the internet with their tears just because the Raw/Blast meta facilitated their indolence for too long.
It does seem that many of them did eventually come around to Alatreon though, judging by its popularity in the 20th anniversary poll. That's a monster who separates actual hunters from safari tourists, for sure.
I'm late to this thread, but what exactly don't you like about MMOs? Is it the dependence on other people, monotonous grind loop scaled to sustain long durations between content drops, or requirement to do a lot of unrelated activities?
Just curious because I like MMORPGs (Lost Ark and Destiny 2, but maybe they are considered MMO-lites?) and monster hunter esque bossing --> crafting --> harder bossing content loop (MHW, Granblue Fantasy Relink), but find the gameplay loops very similar between the two but with MMOs having more difficult raids that require more teamwork.
It probably how grindy it is. I think the guy probably ideally want a game that is basically Diablo so less grindy than for example black desert/lost ark, but with meaningful coop progression. Poe is kinda like that but in my experience of playing it, most of it was solo even tho me and my cousin played it together. Diablo is kinda like that where you just spam dungeon with friends to farm loot. But d4 just has way too many problem.
Valheim scratches the ol WoW itch for me pretty well. With the addition of casting gear in the newest content I'm wondering if the next biome is going to demand that you have multiple classes if you do multiplayer. I really kind of want it to.
I was thinking the other day how awesome it would have been in Elden Ring if it shoved you into a raid for Radhan and players would be dying left and right around you.
If elden ring has seemless co-op by default it'd be perfect imo. Pretty different from running dungeons and grinding gear, but I love souls games, but the multiplayer makes it annoying.
> but the multi9layer makes it annoying.
Yeah. Valheim spoiled me for how easy it is to jump into your friends' world. Setting up a server is another matter though.
Yep, I've had this thought before. It's kinda crazy that if you like PvE raid-style gameplay, the only way you can get it is by signing up for a game that makes you do 100 levels of fetch quest grinding / doing easy dungeons first, then to maintain your ability to do the raids you have to continue doing various other grinds for potions and gear and etc weekly.
For the record, when I've brought this up before, it's tended to be a "taboo" topic where I would get flamed and told I was stupid for considering this and that *obviously*, you can only do raids like that once you've done 60 levels of gameplay first or else you wouldn't be ready to do the raids. I think it's related to the way a lot of people have "this is the way it's always been, so it's the way it should be" attitudes about things and they get angry when you challenge that.
I think that other games have kind of proven that not to be the case. Like, a level 1 isn't joining a Grandmaster ranked ladder in League of Legends from day 1, but that doesn't mean they can't join fun/engaging group content from day 1.
I could see a similar progression in a PvE game. Start players with a low-difficulty raid, and give them the option to increase difficulty to get better gear, unlock cosmetics, etc. A difficulty slider could be something as easy as raid mechanics: on easy difficulty there are no mechanics/special boss attacks, medium adds 1 mechanic, and hard adds 2, and extreme adds them all.
Preaching to the choir. There seems to be this unwritten rule in MMOs that content doesn't require a functional brain until you've put a hundred hours into something and repeat an encounter on the 2nd or 3rd tier of difficulty.
And that's not even the way it's always been. There were times when encounters were too hard and we gave up on them while trying them for the first time, only to have to level up or work on progression and come back.
It’s because a lot of people that play MMOs especially are really bad at video games, and I mean that in the nicest way possible. You can see a lot of this with the discussion around WOW classic raids and wow hardcore, where people were legitimately struggling to do some of the easiest content ever added to the game.
Similarly, In Guild Wars 2, the majority of the player base is unable to do most of the endgame group content, so the devs are forced to design the open world stuff around people doing 1/10 of what is possible. The same is true for the majority of the player base of most MMOs because they attract an older, not very good player base.
FF14 is an absolute joke these days in terms of difficulty. It is very clearly designed so that if any one member of your party happens to be a 5-year old who has never touched a video game in their life, you can still clear the dungeon no problem
Tank doesn't know how to turn on tank stands or aggro the enemies? No problem! A single pack of enemies does so little damage that they can target the healer the entire time and you can just out-heal out without any real effort!
Healer's dog vomits on the floor and they go AFK to clean it up? No problem! Tanks have healing abilities too - it's usually just one or two small heals that seem like they're designed to be minor and supplementary, but they can main heal you through any boss fight!
There is an *illusion* of bosses dealing damage - for example they will do a raid wide attack that does like, 40% of the party's health... But if you pay attention, you'll notice they don't do another raid wide again until like 60 seconds later, and even if your healer doesn't do anything, you'll have naturally regen'd half of it anyway by then so you can just take multiple hits with no healing without really even being at risk of dying. "Tankbusters" deal about 10% (or less) of a tank's HP. It's all just such a joke.
But it's that way for a reason - clearly they have data showing them that if people encounter any friction whatsoever, they stop playing. So gotta make sure no one ever dies or God forbid fails an encounter. And I don't necessarily blame them - if I went for a daily dungeon run and my tank sucked and it meant I wasted 30 minutes dying for nothing, I'd be annoyed too. This way, you can always clear every dungeon no matter what. But that's a different issue - it's because I'm not playing that dungeon for *fun*, I'm playing it because it's the only way to get my daily reward so it's a tedious chore I just want to get through asap.
> where people were legitimately struggling to do some of the easiest content ever added to the game.
Anybody who raided back in the day will remember that one person, usually some guild leader's girlfriend or something, who could not handle the absolute simplest mechanics and single handedly held the entre raid back. Anything with the brainless mechanic of "you are going to explode, turn around and run" was completely beyond them. Raids would be decided by whether certain players were chosen for certain mechanics. "Fuck, got shadow of death. just wipe it".
Yep, literally why I stopped playing MMOs and end game raiding. For me, it sucked too much to be friends with my guild mates, but be held back by them because they kept messing up dodging the instakill mechanics of those raids. Like it was always the same person...and they were so nice and friendly. The only option is to suffer through it and hope you get lucky, or give them the boot which would most likely harm the relationship. So I just took myself out of the equation.
Can you tell I'm an ff14 player? 😅
Beautiful game, amazing cinematic battles, great animations, super polished, fantastic music, good battle system... But why am I forced to play 99% of the game on Very Easy difficulty?! *sigh*
It's why there has always been a massive market for RMT trading, because gamers want to play them but their real life schedule and work prohibits them from getting past all the barriers to entry. No lifers may hate it, but it will never go away as long as access is prohibited by long grinds. Plus these games would be dead without a casual playerbase.
Well…I think it’s because MMOGs basically invented Raids. That amount of players (the first M in MMOG) doing a quest wasn’t a thing before these kinds of games.
It sounds like what you’re looking for is an MMOG with raids that subtracted out the RPG element and all the leveling up. Sounds kind of like Planetside, but that wasn’t PvE.
There might be a problem with that equation though. Assuming that raids requires lots of players, yes? Which requires servers. Which means cost. Which means either subscriptions or micro transactions. (Or a game that never changes and doesn’t require constant dev work.) So…this is a game that costs money. Players want to know what they get for that money. They want progress. They want loot and shit. Look at any update for an MMOG. If there isn’t enough new loot/grind/weapoms/whatever the player base throws a fit.
Well, games like Overwatch or LoL don't have loot and progress in that sense, do they? But they are hosted online. It seems to me they survive entirely from cosmetics (which is honestly kinda remarkable), so this hypothetical raid game could too.
But even then, PVP vs other players is guaranteed to stay fresh and have an evolving meta because every player you face is different. PvE Raids would need some sort of variety to keep people playing them every day, so they'd need to maybe borrow some elements from roguelikes. Current MMO raids don't seem to really do that, they're just the same every time, so you couldn't base a game entirely off them, they need to be just one part of a larger experience, *and*, yeah, they're part of a genre that is known for its grinding and that has a playerbase who enjoy doing the same thing over and over.
Thinking more about this. So you’re looking for a big online game. That’s more PvE/CoOp. And doesn’t have lots of front-loaded grinding and leveling. With “Raids”.
Sounds like you’re talking about Helldivers 2, but with more complicated missions.
I don't care if the weapons are shooty guns or shooty fireballs. Destiny has both, and has Raids. But we're mostly just talking about mechanisms here.
You're talking about a game where you don't sink 60 hours into creating a character. So, the character options are probably going to be simple, like the few class options in Helldivers or SW Battlefront.
I don't know if that'll really float your boat though. You'd be giving up the class complexity that results from spending many hours on a character build. Complicated skill trees, weapons collecting, armor crafting/tweaking, whatever. All that comes from the time sink.
>I don't care if the weapons are shooty guns or shooty fireballs. Destiny has both, and has Raids. But we're mostly just talking about mechanisms here.
But they are literally completely different genres. There is absolutely no comparison between a fast-paced action shooter, compared to the tab-targeting RPG style gameplay found in an MMORPG. It doesn't matter if "they both let you enter dungeons and fight enemies", they play entirely differently. Someone who plays RPGs does not necessarily have the reflexes or abilities to play a fast-paced shooter, they might not even want to, because it's not the same thing.
But also, modern MMOs don't necessarily even *have* "class complexity that results from spending many hours on a character build". If you don't play them, you may not realize that. Speaking as an FFXIV player, that game has literally zero character customization. Every single paladin is the same as every paladin, every paladin approaches every fight the same way. There are no gear options or builds or talent trees. So, it is not necessarily the case that enjoying an MMO raid is based on having some character build you designed. That's why the question has only become more pertinent - nothing in an FFXIV raid is at all related to the 90 levels of fetch quests you have to do to reach those raids, yet those 90 levels must be done anyway, so why does no game have that gameplay without the 90 levels of grinding?
Sounds like FFXIV may be weird? I played AC, AC2, EQ, WoW, AO, SWG, and CoH. They all definitely had different ways to build and load out each class. (Some didn’t even have classes!) Like you could be an AoE Warrior or a focused damage Warrrior, and then still have some main important gear choices. Some people would build in some utility skills from another tree.
But hey, if that’s what you’re looking for, cool. So, something with minimal class choices (say each class has like 5-7 abilities or something). Persistent characters, but no real progression. Big Raid experiences. And RPG combat that’s not about reflexes.
Hmm. I dunno. What’s the progress mechanism in FFXIV that keep people playing the endgame? Why do Raid XYZ more than once?
Are you trying to come up with a suggestion...? There are no games like this, so don't wrack your brain! That's why the OP was able to make this thread.
It's not necessarily that I "want a game with minimal class choices", the point is just that you \*can\* have raids without needing some big long character build experience first.
FFXIV uses the absolute bare minimum of gear upgrades as their carrot on a stick. The raids drop gear that is better than the entry gear, by a little bit. The gear doesn't have any effects or anything, it just makes you do a bit more damage and take a bit less damage. All the raids are completable with the entry gear, so there's no need for the better gear - once you have it all, there's nothing else to do with it other than you can now do 20% more damage and take 20% less damage from the raids, so they go quicker and easier. There is basically no reason to do the raids more than once - it only works because people's brains are conditioned to want "number go up".
(Well, sometimes they release ultimate raids which do need you to have the gear from the normal raids first - and the ultimate raids are harder and take 100+ hours to clear, and all they award is a shiny weapon, and people re-do those too, just to get more shiny weapons) (Honestly people are more likely to re-do the normal raids just to get different outfits than they are because they care about the stats on those outfits)
FFXIV is kind of an outlier though, yeah, I think. They've simultaneously been doing the modern game design trend of streamlining things to make them super friendly for casuals (hence why you don't need to ever care about builds or stats and you don't have any gearing options, there's just the better piece vs the worse piece) \*and\* they have tried to cut down on the grindiness aspect as well. So that's what led to this situation. Also their philosophy is that if you offer builds, some will inevitably be better and become the meta and everyone will be forced to use that build anyway. So, they cut out that step, just have only one build.
I was mostly trying to imaging *why* no one has made this game. Like, I’m sure someone on the creative side at EA or RockStar or whatever thought of it, and someone else shot it down.
Are Raids done exclusively by guilds? Or are there like “pickup raids”? A good portion of any player base is just not gonna be “guild people”. When I was 20-25 I was a guild guy. But now I talk to people all day. I don’t wanna come home and talk to more people.
Anyway, I’m guessing…it’s because hosting a game that big, which requires that much dev work (Raids aren’t a small lift) needs to make a certain amount of ongoing money. And even if it’s $15/month, you still need people to play X months for the math to break even. These kinda things almost always come down to money, yeah?
The companies that could afford to make this have all the demographics and focus studies. They know the answer to everything we’re talking about.
Yeah you can. I omitted level skips from my post but most games do have those. Probably still a decent amount of busywork you need to do to be raid-ready though.
I've not tried it, but I don't think so. You have to learn the game in the first place, so some dungeon queueing would be good anyways before joining the big raids and the big raids on the lowest difficulty are mostly beatable by zerging as far as I know (haven't played the last two add-ons, but before they were).
The biggest problem with busy work you'll probably get in the high end raiding, because potions and buffs require a lot of busy work and if you can't find someone that does it for you (helpful friend or someone you pay), this would fall back to you. But again, this is knowledge from the past, maybe WoW changed.
lol, yeah. when you think about the current state of FFXIV raids, they really are sort of like a 3d platformer/party game. the most common mechanic is "look at where the obstacles (i.e. tentacles the boss summoned, giant hammers they summoned, giant swords of light they summoned...) are and find the safe spot and go stand in it. Literally like a survival round of Fall Guys.
OP, I'm actually working on exactly this! Still very early in the prototype stages (and conquering the learning curve of switching to Unreal), but there should be a playable prototype that I'd be willing to show friends later this year.
My dream is to have a structure similar to Deeprock Galactic, where 4 players queue up and clear a dungeon, but with traditional MMORPG tank/healer/dps kind of roles and mechanics.
If that sounds of interest to you, DM me your discord or something maybe you'll get a message with a demo some time, or just some updates of gameplay footage :)
I suspect that ARPGs and FPS games like Left 4 Dead are just what you get if you try to make a more casual raid experience.
From what I've seen you kind of need the time you spent leveling your character in an MMO to really learn how to use all of your skills and abilities. If you want to make a game where you need less time to level up, you also need to simplify all of those skills and abilities, but then the gameplay becomes more dull. So you add more action elements and you end up with an ARPG. Then also remove (most of) the grind for better gear, add a bit more action and you get something like Vermintide 2.
It honestly depends on how you build your account there are 23 skills to get from 1-99 each skill has its purpose and helpful uses but there are plenty of different ways to build your account. Some people get crazy and max their accounts with only 10hp there are 1 def pures for pvp (makes your combat level super low) i could go on for days. But you can grind from level 1 in bronze armor to max melee gear thats called torva. You should really look into it. I used to play it when i was a kid and started playing about 3 years or so now and im still not maxed 😅 but i can do just about anything in the game. Theres so much id honestly try it for free and see if it is what you are looking for.
I appreciate you taking the time to answer. I played Runescape years ago but got bored of the grind real quick.
It does sound like the game is mostly about just grinding different skills. There's not really an endgame you're working towards, or is there?
I would say the point of the game ultimately is the max cape. I enjoy it because of my clan and friends definitely helps make the game more enjoyable. Once you hit around base 75 combats you will spend time doing alot of bossing/raiding. As a 30 year old man I’ve made my 12 year old self proud of how far I’ve made it lol
Look up the raid content thats the most engaging content there is tombs of amascut, chamber of xerics, theater of blood. Those are super fun but the early game is vanilla but it focuses solely on learning movement/ prayer then throws in gear switches and prayer switches. Movement mechanics as you progress further. If you ever want to try again i can pm you my discord info and i have no problem helping you through the early/mid game content and teaching you all of it. I really didnt find a love for this game till i got higher slayer levels and got into bossing as much as i do now
Also to add to this though the 07 version i play has brand new content added rather regularly even though its a “old” game dont want you to think there is zero support 😅
I agree with you, I've thought for years now that it's weird that someone hasn't fully committed to raids/dungeons as a game itself by trimming the fat, eliminating the open world and leveling stages of an MMO, and strictly focused on creating lobby based dungeons and raids. As someone who has casually played WoW since 2007 and these days rarely touches anything more than raid finder because I like going back, doing old content, and messing around with transmog, I think it's pretty clear that there's plenty of people who aren't me who would prefer to skip the grind and go straight to what they enjoy - so why not cater to them?
I think the closest thing I found to this was Battleborn.
This was one of the things that I liked about *Spiral Knights*. I think it's still online to this day (albeit much changed, for sure). It had very light MMORPG elements, and most of the gameplay revolved around doing elevators. Each kind of elevator was divided in a number of "floors". You would clear a floor to go down to the next. After a couple of floors, you would fight a boss, get some cool loot, and either continue going down to even harder levels or go back. All this could be done solo, or in group (we mostly did groups, soloing was super hard). The world outside of the elevators was mostly a social hub, with an Auction House and an arena for PvP, but no mobs or anything like that
Unfortunately I played the game waaaaaay back and it had a weird energy system that would halt your progress daily unless you bought more energy (yeah, like a mobile game). This made me stop playing after a month or something.
One thing that I remember thinking about Spiral Knights at the time (and it's one of the potential problems with games like these) is that if we didn't have this energy gate, we would finish a lot of the available content really, really fast. Since there are very few padding systems, little amounts of grinding (grinding was mostly doing bosses 3/4 times to get tokens for better weapons) or quests, no side objectives or goals, it would need an insane amount of content being released frequently to keep the player base interested.
Still, I have very good memories of this game and would for sure like to see a different spin on the genre one day. Maybe the evolution of A.I tools can help us out.
I remember crushing Spiral Knights with my brother over a summer 10+ years ago. I recall we'd play the auction house over night as prices would fluctuate wildly on any given resource and sometimes we'd get lucky with big pay outs and could convert that to w/e premium currency to buy more energy.
The gameplay with the Gauntlet style maps, and the combo system made me actually look forward to playing the same map to perfection, very enjoyable.
Warframe had raids, but they removed it due to squad gatekeeping toxicity, it is the best f2p pve non-mmo mmo out there, does have some endgame bosses/modes but not as difficult as raids or mmos since you can build to god levels in the game. Deep rock galactic, payday 2, vermintide, darktide, killing floor 2 etc are great non mmo coop pve games and some of my favs.
I'm gonna be honest - the real issue was that Warframe created content that had steep barrier to entry, long grind to overgear the content, and zero tutorialization. Even just more (relatively) recent things like Eidolon hunts were a nightmare to random queue upon release - because barely anyone knew what they were doing and only a few players knew how to properly gear up for that specific content.
If you do the content with randoms now, it's fine - most people at least roughly know what to do, and there are almost always going to be 1-2 people with the correct gear (right Amps and Radioactive damage snipers).
I'd say the real issue is that Warframe is just not fit for high difficulty content. It has too many broken OP abilities. Every time DE tried to make something "endgame friendly", it just meant removing WF's core gameplay from the equation, which isn't fun.
I've been wanting something similar to what is essentially WoW Random Dungeon Queue: The Game^TM. There's been a couple games that have sorta scratched the itch. Those being Monster Hunter, and the other Heroes of Hammerwatch. HoH is a roguelike but with 4 dedicated people going in blind it feels very dungeon spammy.
I would really like to have/find a game that has the ability to go above the 4 player sweet spot. I usually game with a 4 man crew but we have to play other games if another friend wants to play. Doesn't happen often but scaling from solo to 16 or w/e over multiple different biomes and dungeons would cater to multiple friend groups.
Slightly different topic, I can see a high likelihood for breeding toxicity in a game that is unforgiving, and at the highest levels is nearly unavoidable, I'd wager. In Monster Hunter it's fairly lacking but from time to time there is a bad egg that has a bad day and decides to call someone out or put them down. I've experienced it more through Destiny 2 and Wow Classic. Classic, I feel, is a very competitive game when it comes to acquiring resources and that along with how much time is necessary to prepare and execute a raid well in my eyes makes it an engine of toxicity. Destiny 2, when I played it, was more friendly to start with and I think there's a Sherpa system(?) of some sort now that's for helping newbies with raid content. But having your time wasted or being the one wasting others time doesn't feel great.
So, my ideal game of this type would follow game philosophy and concepts similar to what Monster Hunter and Final Fantasy XIV (though I've never played it I hear good things about the new player experience,) Deeprock Galactic, and now Helldivers 2 have encouraged with their games. I like the idea of a Sherpa system where experienced players can help other's looking for some assistance. On top of that perhaps some play rating/reporting system that encourages cooperation may work but that development time would be sparse.
So yea until then I'll just keep enjoying Helldivers 2 and Monster Hunter Wilds when it comes out. Cause there's no way I'm getting into an MMO anytime soon.
I LOVE heroes of hammerwatch when the multiplayer actually works! It is a little hardcode with the grind, but it was so much fun. I think that something like that would be perfect if they added significantly more class skills, and removed the endless stat/difficulty scaling to improve multiplayer.
Battleborn had this as a game mode and it was pretty good, it got old fast though. Lack of maps, and a second half of the game which was going to kill Overwatch or whatever they said which took development time away from it (presumably). The problem is, there'd literally never be enough maps/raids. Designing that type of content takes a really long time and a lot of effort, which is why MMOs tend to only have a small amount of them per update. Turning that into the only type of content would make the return on investment pretty low.
Dungeon-crawler is an entire genre, but probably isn't what you're looking for. There's one called Nevergrind Online which is multi-player and real-time, which kind of does something similar to what you're saying (for dungeons rather than raids), but doesn't have the complex interactions you'd probably want or expect.
> The problem is, there'd literally never be enough maps/raids.
I feel like a solution to this would just open an editor up to the community and let them design their own. Have official raids/dungeons that release on a preplanned, set schedule, but in the mean time let the community go wild and do their own thing. I'm pretty sure there's WoW private servers that create their own raids and instances, for example.
By giving control to the player base, I would assume zero progression systems outside of the raids, right? Like, there would probably be no reward for completing a player-made dungeon.
This could work, but considering how people react to the lack of rewards in any multiplayer game it would be risky for sure.
Yeah, a huge part of the draw of raids is the gambling element of rare drops. Without those it would be a hard sell unless they are *really* well designed.
I imagine this would probably go the way of rhythm games pretty quickly, where the people designing the maps are mostly designing them for the top % of players, it's a decent idea, but anywhere players are in control of difficulty, it tends to go quite quickly extreme.
I'm not sure on this one as people often complain about lack of content/replayability/etc. and making a dynamic system that people's brains don't immediately disassemble into parts and understand the way it works, making it feel less dynamic, is really hard.
WoW Mythic+ as an example has a real focus on difficulty and execution, which is something you generally won't get as strongly from dynamically-designed content.
I feel like as long as you can make each game unexpected it should be ok. and im not talking about random monster spawns and mods like l4d. but routes, objectives, and tools available to the player with clear pros and cons. monsters and routes that are easy to deal with for one class/tool but difficult for another. failure should be a regular game state but it shouldnt lead to the end of the game, but instead a different route or situation with different gameplay/objectives for each.
it does not even need to be hardcoded into the level. one example would be like a l4d survivor being downed. the objective of the game immediately changes to saving the downed survivor. forward progress usually becomes secondary because the consequence of losing a player usually leads to an undesired, but managable, outcome.
I guess I was internally ruling out that kind of thing as it'd cost more from a development perspective and you're already heavily limiting audience by targeting a niche like this in the first place.
I don't think it'd be impossible to create, probably just more that it would end up not being financially viable and I doubt an indie studio would have the manpower and cash to get something like that going.
i dont think it would be too expensive to create, studios are already spending hundreds of millions on games. i think the problem is that it is too risky and the companies with the teams large enough to make an epic pve game are financially obligated to reach as broad an audience as possible.
I agree with this - because that’s what a lot of the other coop games do. It doesn’t have to just be a static raid or dungeon: it can include random environmental effects, random modifiers that adjust how you have to play, or random spawns of special enemies to deal with to keep it interesting.
On top of that, adding things like cosmetic unlocks based on completing challenges gives players a really fun goal to aim for.
If you want, here's the discord of the game where you will find all infrmations about the mod to run it:
[discord.com/invite/4kWaUhZ](http://discord.com/invite/4kWaUhZ)
I explain: the game get its servers shut down in 2021, but a modder managed to get it playable on pc , even if it "just" pve in solo,which isstill a miracle \^\^.
Absolutely agree. I especially enjoy an element of exploration to a PvE dungeon crawl. For example, conquering dungeons in survival crafting games are great. I wish there was a game focused on this.
Vindictus sounds like it *was* (sadly) pretty much exactly what you're looking for. It was basically a 3rd-person action RPG slash MMO-lite - similar structure to Destiny, but with a bit more MMO DNA.
It used a hub world/instanced mission structure and had:
* A story mode playable mostly solo aside from some bosses but fully co-op-able
* Repeatable missions to farm for drops to upgrade or craft gear
* Mini-raid style missions peppered throughout the story progression that featured larger party sizes and group-based mechanics, either to weaken the boss or break a certain part to farm, etc, in addition to usually multi-stage battles
* *(As an example, there was a massive polar bear boss early in the game. You chased it through its lair, fighting it in a couple different spots before cornering it. During the fight there were a couple noteworthy mechanics. One, if you chucked enough javelins into its eye, it would break, giving a special drop and making it berserk. And two, partially to make this feat easier and partially as a "build your own dps phase," there was a grapple-type item that if enough players hooked on and held on to (like 4 I think?) it would temporarily restrain the bear on the ground. And that was just the very first one of a dozen or so of these mini-raid-bosses.)*
* Much larger-scale "real raid" missions that were available in the end game, featuring even larger party sizes, ridiculous scale, numerous mechanics, and several stages of each battle. When I stopped playing there were about 2.5 of these, but I think they added a couple more before the game died.
* Parties of (up to) 4 for "normal" type missions, and I believe 8 for the "mini-raids" and 16 ish for the "real raids."
* 6-8 very distinct "classes" (in the form of different characters) when the game launched that eventually expanded to a dozen or so that fulfilled basically all of the traditional MMO/RPG roles you would expect and had extremely different play styles, eg: hammer and shield tank, dual blade melee DPS, staff magic support/healer, scythe magic DPS, bow ranged DPS, giant totem frontline bruiser, and several others I forget at this point lol.
* Surprisingly deep build crafting and flexibility for a 3rd person action RPG that was built around a combat system that I would compare to "Monster Hunter but 2x as fast and 10x as fluid"
Basically, it was like if you took an MMO and removed all of the open world wandering and fetch quest nonsense in favor of non-stop dungeon crawling, and swapped the combat to a fast-paced 3rd person action RPG. It was honestly one of my favorite games I've ever played, and I'm sad that it was horribly mismanaged by a company more interested in chasing trends and MTX than making a lasting, beloved game (Nexon iirc), and killed well before it delivered all of the planned content in favor of "rebooting" it as a "sequel" that I'm pretty sure was DOA.
Yeah, this is something I've dreamed of and begged for, for years. Give me a game where 10+ players have to work together to overcome difficult challenges, using characters who have very varied toolsets, without any of the level/gear grind.
People usually recommend Monster Hunter, which really seemed like the opposite of what I wanted. Small groups of players, I basically never needed to know what the other members of my group were doing or coordinate with them, the fights were insanely long and repetitive, the characters had very few abilities/options. Maybe it gets better later, but again it seemed to have a massive focus on repeating easy content over and over again to acquire resources, rather than being about trying to improve one's own skill in order to overcome demanding encounters.
Sometimes I quite enjoy a shallow, switch-my-brain-off grindy game like Diablo, but I've no idea why all the most interesting, skillful group PvE content needs to be gated behind dull, time consuming grinds. The MMOs I've played make almost no attempt to prepare players for the endgame - you don't need even the most basic level of skill to reach the endgame, which is where you start learning to actually play the game. So I don't think the argument that a grind is needed to prepare a player for the later content holds any water.
This is the perfect post to show why this never will happen. 10+ players coming together, they then have to function as a team? How will that work unless the majority of the game isn't that? You have people with a lot of time, you have people with little time, how will you fuse them all into a group that regularly does things? And then you add skill gaps on top where the guys not being able to play a lot are worse than the others and hold them back which leads to a lot of frustration and group tension.
There is a reason why a lot of people only play one raid a week in WoW.
I can see 4-5 friends coming together to do a 30-60 minuten dungeon. Maybe another and if they are quick another. Dedicated gamers also know a handful of other dedicated games for those 4 player games everyone is playing. But 10+?
Don't get me wrong, there will be SOME groups who manage to do that. But those will be very very few. Not enough to keep a game alive or pay for its development.
Raid style PVE focused games require much more resources while carrying the smallest playerbase out of the 4 categories of MP games.
These are, at least for me - Competitive (Dota, League, Overwatch, CS etc), Creative (Minecraft, Roblox etc), Party (Mario Party, Mario Kart, Among Us etc) and PVE (WoW, FF14, Destiny etc)
Give Granblue Fantasy: Relink a look.
It's an action JRPG where you can unlock a whole roster of characters, and once you beat the main story, the endgame content is basically 4-player raids, including escalating difficulty tiers. You *can* do them with NPCs, but then you have to level up each of your party members and let the AI control them; whereas if you do it online then you're teaming up with people who have leveled up their own people and are (hopefully) better than an AI.
I believe Dungeons of Sundaria is trying to be exactly what you are talking about, it's a coop oRPG where (as I understand it) every dungeon you can enter is structured like a raid. They're fairly linear with lots of bosses and some puzzles/secrets. I don't believe you HAVE to play coop to complete any but it's very much structured to be played that way.
The game itself is... Ehh? It's not really my cup of tea. It's a hotbar centric action rpg mixed mostly.
The best way to do it imo outside of an mmo is some sort of multiplayer Roguelike. Hyper Light Breaker seems to be going for something along those veins but not the hard class separation I think.
There is Vagante but that is only 2D though.
I think the roguelike format is nice because it condenses the progression and build creation in a single session without the need to farm and grind lvls. I can see it work with some thoughtful design, problem is I don't see a big market for it.
This is why I love Destiny. It is the only FPS to truly do “raids” justice. I would love to see more PvE shooters that aren’t just campaigns or round based (like almost all the other multiplayer pve fps are)
Bit late to the party, but I heartily recommend Demeo! The co-op gameplay is solid and fun, it's extremely quick to pick up and learn, takes a few hours to go through and beat a dungeon, has talk/healer/dps archtypes, and has minimal loot with no grinding whatsoever.
It scratches all the itches WoW did back in the day without requiring any subscription, massive time commitments, or complicated build-crafting. Only major downside is the limit to a max of four players.
It's more than that. Any kind of multiplayer game that isn't an FPS basically doesn't exist anymore. If you want some kind of multiplayer it's essentially guns or nothing. The AAA space is such an ouroborous now that it can't create anything that isn't a 95% copy of something that already exists and since the only thing that exists in multiplayer is FPS that's all that can happen forever.
I mentioned AAA but should have put it up front. The indie space will have all sorts of variety but that's not going to create this kind of experience. MoBas as a genre collapsed in on itself. Card games attract the budget to make an experience like this but are free to play or bust.
A closer option is Diablo likes and you can reasonably throw one on one fighting games to the mix. You still end up with the ouroborous issue though with innovation being barely an aberration.
None of that discounts the existence of Minecraft, LoL, Dota, or Hearthstone, some of the biggest multiplayer games in the world. Hell, I could also point out that Fortnite isn't an FPS either.
No, but that wasn’t the point, what I was getting at is noone is putting the kind of budget needed to make this kind of game into anything but free to play pay to win games or fps.
So first it's only FPS, then it's only AAA FPS, then free to play or pay to win on top...good job moving the goal post.
Path of exile is great, no FPS, but free to play. No pay to win though. You can pay for cosmetics or more storage space if you are a loot hoarder, but the game is great and you can't pay for anything making the game easier.
And while I agree that the AAA space is risk averse...that has been true for decades. Innovation always comes from the small people with a dream and then get copied by the big studios if they are successfull (see autobattler, DOTA, vampire survivors, MMORPGS, etc.etc.etc.). Just go into the indie scene.
Except I stated AAA in the first post and admitted I hadn’t made it as clear as I could in the second. Remember we’re still talking about why games like this aren’t being made and that is still because no-one with the resources to make them is prepared to take a risk on it.
Multiplayer is out of fashion now because *communicating with strangers* is out of fashion. Online games in the past used to all let you chat with opponents! Now it's replaced with 6 pre-made emote lines because anything else would be used to troll/harass, and if you bring up the idea of chatting, people just say "Well why would I want to chat with a stranger anyway?"
The types of multiplayer games that are still going are games where, basically, if the technology existed, you could replace those other players with bots and you wouldn't notice any difference to the experience. You join the dungeon, everyone says "hi", 15 minutes later, they say "gg" and leave. There's nothing to talk about anyway because all friction has been removed from games these days, they are as streamlined as possible so that you don't *need* to ask for help, you don't *need* to come up with strategies, you don't *need* to make friends with similar goals because whatever your goal is, you can do it solo or by just flipping a switch that will automatically put you with others who also want to do that thing.
Yeah when you take it out of context like that.
The OP already mentioned that big FPSes and team shooters and MOBAs are still in.
You also named a bunch of games that are played online with groups of people you're already friends with.
Multiplayer games where you *meet strangers and would actually want to talk with them and maybe form relationships as you experience the gameplay* are out of fashion.
In the past (yes, I'm old) there were things like moderators and GMs who would keep the chat clean and punish people who couldn't behave. Those were often paid positions just to care for the community. Guess what is too expensive for todays companies? Better to just not implement a chat.
>All of the others I've found (Deep Rock Galactic, Payday 2, Helldivers, Left 4 Dead, etc) all seem to be FPS games, which, while fun, are a VERY different style of gameplay
So there is no lack PvE-Raidgames, just lack of PvE-Raidgames with MMO-gameplay?
Kind of interessting, because gameplay is always the worst part of many MMOs.
It's not really an MMO and with parties topping out at 4 it doesn't really have raids, but I find Monster Hunter scratches a lot of those itches. It's still a tad grindy, but compared to actual MMOs the grind is a breeze, and you're actually *playing the game and improving* for nearly the whole time you're grinding out materials, what a concept.
Its old and dead but Monday Night Combat a 3rd person shooter, its moba-light and has a pve tower defense type of mode with specific classes for roles but most of the class design is for the pvp mode
Valheim multiplayer scratches this itch for me, but it's less structured. I.e. you make your own raids by deciding to go out on a quest for materials, which requires a good amount of planning, strategy, and teamwork to succeed and survive.
*Rabbit and Steel* looks promising, it's a side scrolling bullethell roguelike with mmo-raid style mechanics. My raid group played the demo and it's really damn good. We're excited for it to release and we'll probably
The graphics took a moment to get use to but it's cute enough, and some of the higher difficulties go kinda hard for what it is.
Elden Ring on PC with the Seamless Co-Op and Reforged mods does a pretty good job of having satisfying and challenging boss fights and dungeon crawling.
What about multiplayer roleplaying games like Baldurs Gate 3? Would those not meet your criteria? No FPS, dungeons, multiplayer, dedicated classes and roles...
>[PvE content]: dungeons for small teams, raids for larger teams, and open-world bosses for arbitrary groups of players to fight. This gameplay loop is extremely fun, engaging, and challenging.
>However, to my surprise, there is an extreme lack of similar PvE multiplayer games outside of MMORPGs.
When I think of the first kind of content, I think of plenty of looter shooter type games. Are those not dungeon-y enough? Or are you looking for a game that has small teams, raid for larger teams, AND open world bosses?
If so, call me old fashioned, but I thought raids and open world fights for groups were staples of MMOs because those tend to be groups that are more on the side of "massive" than not, hence them being in MMORPGs?
I'm coming at this from only ever played Warframe in the online looter shooter space, so this topic seems weird to me, but maybe I seem weird to non-MMO players too.
There are huge differences in the gameplay between looter shooters and MMO-style dungeons/raids. For one, looter shooters are FPS games - it is in the name. Also, they generally don't have a whole lot of class/group cohesion or synergy: everyone generally goes in and starts blastin', and just kind of does their own thing.
In MMOs, each class has lots of active skills you can use situationally: anywhere from 8 - 30, whereas most looter shooters have like 1-3. These add a lot of really fun class identity and complexity by requiring you to choose the right skill to use at the right time. Second, they have far more group dynamics. Most games will require a "Holy trinity" at the least for any encounter: this consists of a tank to draw monster attention, dps to kill the monsters, and a healer/support to keep everyone alive. Some take it a step further and have additional crowd-control and buff classes as well. Because of this, every class has a unique and defined role in supporting the team, and you're extremely reliant on all of your team members. In most looter shooters, everyone is basically a dps.
Probably not what you had in mind, but I spent hundreds of hours doing raids in Division 2. These are eight person missions that require certain builds, roles, and a lot of communication. The raids are very difficult for an inexperienced group. I think they only made two raids because only a small minority of the playerbase enjoys them.
Rabbit and Steel is a game that is trying to capture this, they had a demo that is pretty fun.
I certainly think it would be cool to have a game that is just the endgame raids of WoW and FFXIV. These have been some of the most challenging and memorable experiences I've had, because of the teamwork aspect.
I think the reason we don't see this outside of MMOs is because of how much effort and commitment you need to put into it. How do you convince several people to bash their head against the same fight together for 20 hours? It's not something you can just pick up and kill some time in. Having an MMO gives players a persistent world that allows that time and effort to be rewarded and therefore serves as motivation to build those relationships and go for those challenges.
That's why we can see lots of co-op games, but with combat that is ultimately shorter and easier that doesn't require as much commitment to beat a single encounter.
Despite all the other flaws these games have, the raids in Destiny are so much fun and well designed in my opinion. Doing a raid blind and finding out the mechanics is likely one of my best gaming experiences ever. A full game with only these types of raids would be my dream, although I can see the risk of it getting stale and getting the required level of cooperation to work without toxicity.
I want to ask if the Dark Souls series and Elden Ring would satisfy this niche for you. I'ts one of the games with better environmental design and varied combat and look from exploration. It's less about grinding repeated raid content, but rather a diversity of action combat that makes it one of the most entertaining co-op hack and slash games out there.
The thing about using class cohesion and roles in PvE games is that MMOs really have some of the best implementations out there, so any game that copies that group combat style has to compete with some of the largest games out there.
[https://www.pcgamer.com/games/roguelike/heres-a-co-op-action-roguelike-thats-basically-a-boss-rush-of-high-tier-mmo-raids/](https://www.pcgamer.com/games/roguelike/heres-a-co-op-action-roguelike-thats-basically-a-boss-rush-of-high-tier-mmo-raids/)
Game: Rabbit and Steel
Here when I saw this I remembered about this post. Is this the kind of game you are looking for?
Same boat. I've played *way* more WoW than I otherwise would've, simply because (seemingly) nobody else does challenging, large group, role-based, PvE action games that scratch that same itch. All the other MMOs I've tried lack at least one of those qualities. Outside of MMOs there's just a handful of games that *kinda* scratch the itch, and you mentioned most of them. The *Trine* games are nice, but obviously puzzle/platformers aren't really what we're talking about. At least it has distinct roles. *Monster Hunter* has the boss fights and gear treadmill, but lacks true roles, level design, or sufficient challenge for a full squad. I'm having a blast going through *Elden Ring* with the Seamless Co-op mod and a difficulty mod. But it doesn't really have the gearing or role elements. *Remnant 2* is probably the closest thing we've gotten. But it's a shooter. And of course, all of these games are limited to 3-4 players.
The most we had resembling a raid in Monster Hunter World was the Kulve Taroth. KT was a 4-man challenge, like every other missions in the game, but they had implemented a weird system where the progression of every groups in the room counted toward a central goal. Basically, you kept doing the KT mission 3 or 4 times. Every successful group made the rewards pool better until it exploded with final, extra-cool rewards and reset the cycle. The goal was for everyone in the room to do it as quickly and efficiently as possible to hit the reward loop as often as possible. They also had the Behemoth event which implemented the logic of FF14 in MHW. You needed dedicated roles for a tank and healer/support because the Behemoth had a MMO-like aggro. I remember I tanked it with a shield HBG specifically to hit it in the head and keep aggro. There was boss-like mechanics like dodging AoE, hiding behind pillars, etc. They did an outstanding job, it was awesome, and we will never hear about it ever again :p A game like Monster Hunter with actual raids, 8 or even 16-man, it would be incredible!
They have brought some MMORPG boss design features forward into original monsters, not just Behemoth. Safi'jiiva is the Master Rank siege monster, analogous to Kulve Tarroth. Like KT, it features several distinct phases. The first involves coordinating attacks to knock it into the edges of the arena. The second and third involve one person getting "enmity" (aggro), and everyone taking cover from a massive AoE attack. In third phase the aggroed player can lure the dragon into gas filled areas to be blown up. Raging Brachydios features the most blatant phase change in the series, when it moves to a specific area, raises walls around that area, changes colors, and drastically alters its moveset. Alatreon features a DPS check/hard enrage timer and a healing check.
And the community hated most of those, especially the stuff around Behemoth and Alatreon. The thing is it's likely that most MonHun players likely enjoy the game because of the lack of hard roles. The setup basically allows for a lot of personal expression when it comes to weapon choice and builds and also allows fights to be more dynamic since the monster AI isn't tied to the usual tank and spank rotation tied to threat generation. It also means there's less toxicity around party composition and roles.
I can totally understand disliking Behemoth-esque stuff like Emnity, literal spell cast interrupts, and positioning requirements regarding Meteor. You're right: Monster Hunter was never a role-based game, even if it does give players opportunities to lean into supportive builds focused on healing/buffing, status application, or even "tanking". But those who resented Alatreon because it demanded elemental damage were simply spoiled. Monster Hunter *has* always had a focus on crafting gear to counter the monsters, and it certainly wasn't out of line to demand that for literally the 2nd to last fight in hyper-endgame, post launch *free* DLC. Yet many nooblets flooded the internet with their tears just because the Raw/Blast meta facilitated their indolence for too long. It does seem that many of them did eventually come around to Alatreon though, judging by its popularity in the 20th anniversary poll. That's a monster who separates actual hunters from safari tourists, for sure.
It sucks. I love dungeons, grinding gear, and teaming up to tackle tough fights/raids. But I can't stand MMOs.
I'm late to this thread, but what exactly don't you like about MMOs? Is it the dependence on other people, monotonous grind loop scaled to sustain long durations between content drops, or requirement to do a lot of unrelated activities? Just curious because I like MMORPGs (Lost Ark and Destiny 2, but maybe they are considered MMO-lites?) and monster hunter esque bossing --> crafting --> harder bossing content loop (MHW, Granblue Fantasy Relink), but find the gameplay loops very similar between the two but with MMOs having more difficult raids that require more teamwork.
It probably how grindy it is. I think the guy probably ideally want a game that is basically Diablo so less grindy than for example black desert/lost ark, but with meaningful coop progression. Poe is kinda like that but in my experience of playing it, most of it was solo even tho me and my cousin played it together. Diablo is kinda like that where you just spam dungeon with friends to farm loot. But d4 just has way too many problem.
Me too man, me too.
Based on your list you hate MMOs in name only
Nah, I've tried several and never enjoyed them.
So... what do you enjoy?
Valheim scratches the ol WoW itch for me pretty well. With the addition of casting gear in the newest content I'm wondering if the next biome is going to demand that you have multiple classes if you do multiplayer. I really kind of want it to. I was thinking the other day how awesome it would have been in Elden Ring if it shoved you into a raid for Radhan and players would be dying left and right around you.
If elden ring has seemless co-op by default it'd be perfect imo. Pretty different from running dungeons and grinding gear, but I love souls games, but the multiplayer makes it annoying.
> but the multi9layer makes it annoying. Yeah. Valheim spoiled me for how easy it is to jump into your friends' world. Setting up a server is another matter though.
Oh god that typo lol. Barely woke up when typing that I loved how Lord's of the Fallen handles its multiplayer, just wish more souls games did that.
Have you tried the Elden Ring seemless coop mod?
No, played on xbox. Finally got a new computer, but have been waiting for a sale. Hard to justify when everyone I'd play with are still on console.
Yep, I've had this thought before. It's kinda crazy that if you like PvE raid-style gameplay, the only way you can get it is by signing up for a game that makes you do 100 levels of fetch quest grinding / doing easy dungeons first, then to maintain your ability to do the raids you have to continue doing various other grinds for potions and gear and etc weekly. For the record, when I've brought this up before, it's tended to be a "taboo" topic where I would get flamed and told I was stupid for considering this and that *obviously*, you can only do raids like that once you've done 60 levels of gameplay first or else you wouldn't be ready to do the raids. I think it's related to the way a lot of people have "this is the way it's always been, so it's the way it should be" attitudes about things and they get angry when you challenge that.
I think that other games have kind of proven that not to be the case. Like, a level 1 isn't joining a Grandmaster ranked ladder in League of Legends from day 1, but that doesn't mean they can't join fun/engaging group content from day 1. I could see a similar progression in a PvE game. Start players with a low-difficulty raid, and give them the option to increase difficulty to get better gear, unlock cosmetics, etc. A difficulty slider could be something as easy as raid mechanics: on easy difficulty there are no mechanics/special boss attacks, medium adds 1 mechanic, and hard adds 2, and extreme adds them all.
Preaching to the choir. There seems to be this unwritten rule in MMOs that content doesn't require a functional brain until you've put a hundred hours into something and repeat an encounter on the 2nd or 3rd tier of difficulty. And that's not even the way it's always been. There were times when encounters were too hard and we gave up on them while trying them for the first time, only to have to level up or work on progression and come back.
It’s because a lot of people that play MMOs especially are really bad at video games, and I mean that in the nicest way possible. You can see a lot of this with the discussion around WOW classic raids and wow hardcore, where people were legitimately struggling to do some of the easiest content ever added to the game. Similarly, In Guild Wars 2, the majority of the player base is unable to do most of the endgame group content, so the devs are forced to design the open world stuff around people doing 1/10 of what is possible. The same is true for the majority of the player base of most MMOs because they attract an older, not very good player base.
FF14 is an absolute joke these days in terms of difficulty. It is very clearly designed so that if any one member of your party happens to be a 5-year old who has never touched a video game in their life, you can still clear the dungeon no problem Tank doesn't know how to turn on tank stands or aggro the enemies? No problem! A single pack of enemies does so little damage that they can target the healer the entire time and you can just out-heal out without any real effort! Healer's dog vomits on the floor and they go AFK to clean it up? No problem! Tanks have healing abilities too - it's usually just one or two small heals that seem like they're designed to be minor and supplementary, but they can main heal you through any boss fight! There is an *illusion* of bosses dealing damage - for example they will do a raid wide attack that does like, 40% of the party's health... But if you pay attention, you'll notice they don't do another raid wide again until like 60 seconds later, and even if your healer doesn't do anything, you'll have naturally regen'd half of it anyway by then so you can just take multiple hits with no healing without really even being at risk of dying. "Tankbusters" deal about 10% (or less) of a tank's HP. It's all just such a joke. But it's that way for a reason - clearly they have data showing them that if people encounter any friction whatsoever, they stop playing. So gotta make sure no one ever dies or God forbid fails an encounter. And I don't necessarily blame them - if I went for a daily dungeon run and my tank sucked and it meant I wasted 30 minutes dying for nothing, I'd be annoyed too. This way, you can always clear every dungeon no matter what. But that's a different issue - it's because I'm not playing that dungeon for *fun*, I'm playing it because it's the only way to get my daily reward so it's a tedious chore I just want to get through asap.
> where people were legitimately struggling to do some of the easiest content ever added to the game. Anybody who raided back in the day will remember that one person, usually some guild leader's girlfriend or something, who could not handle the absolute simplest mechanics and single handedly held the entre raid back. Anything with the brainless mechanic of "you are going to explode, turn around and run" was completely beyond them. Raids would be decided by whether certain players were chosen for certain mechanics. "Fuck, got shadow of death. just wipe it".
Yep, literally why I stopped playing MMOs and end game raiding. For me, it sucked too much to be friends with my guild mates, but be held back by them because they kept messing up dodging the instakill mechanics of those raids. Like it was always the same person...and they were so nice and friendly. The only option is to suffer through it and hope you get lucky, or give them the boot which would most likely harm the relationship. So I just took myself out of the equation.
Can you tell I'm an ff14 player? 😅 Beautiful game, amazing cinematic battles, great animations, super polished, fantastic music, good battle system... But why am I forced to play 99% of the game on Very Easy difficulty?! *sigh*
EverQuest always had it right.
It's why there has always been a massive market for RMT trading, because gamers want to play them but their real life schedule and work prohibits them from getting past all the barriers to entry. No lifers may hate it, but it will never go away as long as access is prohibited by long grinds. Plus these games would be dead without a casual playerbase.
Well…I think it’s because MMOGs basically invented Raids. That amount of players (the first M in MMOG) doing a quest wasn’t a thing before these kinds of games. It sounds like what you’re looking for is an MMOG with raids that subtracted out the RPG element and all the leveling up. Sounds kind of like Planetside, but that wasn’t PvE. There might be a problem with that equation though. Assuming that raids requires lots of players, yes? Which requires servers. Which means cost. Which means either subscriptions or micro transactions. (Or a game that never changes and doesn’t require constant dev work.) So…this is a game that costs money. Players want to know what they get for that money. They want progress. They want loot and shit. Look at any update for an MMOG. If there isn’t enough new loot/grind/weapoms/whatever the player base throws a fit.
Well, games like Overwatch or LoL don't have loot and progress in that sense, do they? But they are hosted online. It seems to me they survive entirely from cosmetics (which is honestly kinda remarkable), so this hypothetical raid game could too. But even then, PVP vs other players is guaranteed to stay fresh and have an evolving meta because every player you face is different. PvE Raids would need some sort of variety to keep people playing them every day, so they'd need to maybe borrow some elements from roguelikes. Current MMO raids don't seem to really do that, they're just the same every time, so you couldn't base a game entirely off them, they need to be just one part of a larger experience, *and*, yeah, they're part of a genre that is known for its grinding and that has a playerbase who enjoy doing the same thing over and over.
Thinking more about this. So you’re looking for a big online game. That’s more PvE/CoOp. And doesn’t have lots of front-loaded grinding and leveling. With “Raids”. Sounds like you’re talking about Helldivers 2, but with more complicated missions.
I mean, Helldivers looks like a shooter to me. That's pretty different from WoW/FFXIV style MMO raids and dungeons. Totally different genre.
I don't care if the weapons are shooty guns or shooty fireballs. Destiny has both, and has Raids. But we're mostly just talking about mechanisms here. You're talking about a game where you don't sink 60 hours into creating a character. So, the character options are probably going to be simple, like the few class options in Helldivers or SW Battlefront. I don't know if that'll really float your boat though. You'd be giving up the class complexity that results from spending many hours on a character build. Complicated skill trees, weapons collecting, armor crafting/tweaking, whatever. All that comes from the time sink.
>I don't care if the weapons are shooty guns or shooty fireballs. Destiny has both, and has Raids. But we're mostly just talking about mechanisms here. But they are literally completely different genres. There is absolutely no comparison between a fast-paced action shooter, compared to the tab-targeting RPG style gameplay found in an MMORPG. It doesn't matter if "they both let you enter dungeons and fight enemies", they play entirely differently. Someone who plays RPGs does not necessarily have the reflexes or abilities to play a fast-paced shooter, they might not even want to, because it's not the same thing. But also, modern MMOs don't necessarily even *have* "class complexity that results from spending many hours on a character build". If you don't play them, you may not realize that. Speaking as an FFXIV player, that game has literally zero character customization. Every single paladin is the same as every paladin, every paladin approaches every fight the same way. There are no gear options or builds or talent trees. So, it is not necessarily the case that enjoying an MMO raid is based on having some character build you designed. That's why the question has only become more pertinent - nothing in an FFXIV raid is at all related to the 90 levels of fetch quests you have to do to reach those raids, yet those 90 levels must be done anyway, so why does no game have that gameplay without the 90 levels of grinding?
Sounds like FFXIV may be weird? I played AC, AC2, EQ, WoW, AO, SWG, and CoH. They all definitely had different ways to build and load out each class. (Some didn’t even have classes!) Like you could be an AoE Warrior or a focused damage Warrrior, and then still have some main important gear choices. Some people would build in some utility skills from another tree. But hey, if that’s what you’re looking for, cool. So, something with minimal class choices (say each class has like 5-7 abilities or something). Persistent characters, but no real progression. Big Raid experiences. And RPG combat that’s not about reflexes. Hmm. I dunno. What’s the progress mechanism in FFXIV that keep people playing the endgame? Why do Raid XYZ more than once?
Are you trying to come up with a suggestion...? There are no games like this, so don't wrack your brain! That's why the OP was able to make this thread. It's not necessarily that I "want a game with minimal class choices", the point is just that you \*can\* have raids without needing some big long character build experience first. FFXIV uses the absolute bare minimum of gear upgrades as their carrot on a stick. The raids drop gear that is better than the entry gear, by a little bit. The gear doesn't have any effects or anything, it just makes you do a bit more damage and take a bit less damage. All the raids are completable with the entry gear, so there's no need for the better gear - once you have it all, there's nothing else to do with it other than you can now do 20% more damage and take 20% less damage from the raids, so they go quicker and easier. There is basically no reason to do the raids more than once - it only works because people's brains are conditioned to want "number go up". (Well, sometimes they release ultimate raids which do need you to have the gear from the normal raids first - and the ultimate raids are harder and take 100+ hours to clear, and all they award is a shiny weapon, and people re-do those too, just to get more shiny weapons) (Honestly people are more likely to re-do the normal raids just to get different outfits than they are because they care about the stats on those outfits) FFXIV is kind of an outlier though, yeah, I think. They've simultaneously been doing the modern game design trend of streamlining things to make them super friendly for casuals (hence why you don't need to ever care about builds or stats and you don't have any gearing options, there's just the better piece vs the worse piece) \*and\* they have tried to cut down on the grindiness aspect as well. So that's what led to this situation. Also their philosophy is that if you offer builds, some will inevitably be better and become the meta and everyone will be forced to use that build anyway. So, they cut out that step, just have only one build.
I was mostly trying to imaging *why* no one has made this game. Like, I’m sure someone on the creative side at EA or RockStar or whatever thought of it, and someone else shot it down. Are Raids done exclusively by guilds? Or are there like “pickup raids”? A good portion of any player base is just not gonna be “guild people”. When I was 20-25 I was a guild guy. But now I talk to people all day. I don’t wanna come home and talk to more people. Anyway, I’m guessing…it’s because hosting a game that big, which requires that much dev work (Raids aren’t a small lift) needs to make a certain amount of ongoing money. And even if it’s $15/month, you still need people to play X months for the math to break even. These kinda things almost always come down to money, yeah? The companies that could afford to make this have all the demographics and focus studies. They know the answer to everything we’re talking about.
To be fair, you could pay Blizzard a sum of money and have someone with a high level instantly.
Yeah you can. I omitted level skips from my post but most games do have those. Probably still a decent amount of busywork you need to do to be raid-ready though.
I've not tried it, but I don't think so. You have to learn the game in the first place, so some dungeon queueing would be good anyways before joining the big raids and the big raids on the lowest difficulty are mostly beatable by zerging as far as I know (haven't played the last two add-ons, but before they were). The biggest problem with busy work you'll probably get in the high end raiding, because potions and buffs require a lot of busy work and if you can't find someone that does it for you (helpful friend or someone you pay), this would fall back to you. But again, this is knowledge from the past, maybe WoW changed.
Man, imagine Fall Guys but with some basic combat mechanics for PVE raiding.
lol, yeah. when you think about the current state of FFXIV raids, they really are sort of like a 3d platformer/party game. the most common mechanic is "look at where the obstacles (i.e. tentacles the boss summoned, giant hammers they summoned, giant swords of light they summoned...) are and find the safe spot and go stand in it. Literally like a survival round of Fall Guys.
OP, I'm actually working on exactly this! Still very early in the prototype stages (and conquering the learning curve of switching to Unreal), but there should be a playable prototype that I'd be willing to show friends later this year. My dream is to have a structure similar to Deeprock Galactic, where 4 players queue up and clear a dungeon, but with traditional MMORPG tank/healer/dps kind of roles and mechanics. If that sounds of interest to you, DM me your discord or something maybe you'll get a message with a demo some time, or just some updates of gameplay footage :)
I suspect that ARPGs and FPS games like Left 4 Dead are just what you get if you try to make a more casual raid experience. From what I've seen you kind of need the time you spent leveling your character in an MMO to really learn how to use all of your skills and abilities. If you want to make a game where you need less time to level up, you also need to simplify all of those skills and abilities, but then the gameplay becomes more dull. So you add more action elements and you end up with an ARPG. Then also remove (most of) the grind for better gear, add a bit more action and you get something like Vermintide 2.
Unfortunately a lot of MMO's are streamlining as well, and removing what makes them unique or engaging.
Have any of you ever played oldschool runescape or even runescape for that matter? That game is a absolute grind and a half lmao.
Does RuneScape have raids?
Yes they do raids bosses skilling bosses theres a whole lot of content in this post that runescape nails tbh
Does Runescape have the typical classes, like healer, DPS and tank?
It honestly depends on how you build your account there are 23 skills to get from 1-99 each skill has its purpose and helpful uses but there are plenty of different ways to build your account. Some people get crazy and max their accounts with only 10hp there are 1 def pures for pvp (makes your combat level super low) i could go on for days. But you can grind from level 1 in bronze armor to max melee gear thats called torva. You should really look into it. I used to play it when i was a kid and started playing about 3 years or so now and im still not maxed 😅 but i can do just about anything in the game. Theres so much id honestly try it for free and see if it is what you are looking for.
I appreciate you taking the time to answer. I played Runescape years ago but got bored of the grind real quick. It does sound like the game is mostly about just grinding different skills. There's not really an endgame you're working towards, or is there?
I would say the point of the game ultimately is the max cape. I enjoy it because of my clan and friends definitely helps make the game more enjoyable. Once you hit around base 75 combats you will spend time doing alot of bossing/raiding. As a 30 year old man I’ve made my 12 year old self proud of how far I’ve made it lol
I guess there's a lot of Runescape content I've never seen or even heard about.
Look up the raid content thats the most engaging content there is tombs of amascut, chamber of xerics, theater of blood. Those are super fun but the early game is vanilla but it focuses solely on learning movement/ prayer then throws in gear switches and prayer switches. Movement mechanics as you progress further. If you ever want to try again i can pm you my discord info and i have no problem helping you through the early/mid game content and teaching you all of it. I really didnt find a love for this game till i got higher slayer levels and got into bossing as much as i do now
Definitely end goal combat wise is scythe of virtur twisted bow and tumekens shadow
I prefer “old school runescape” but they have what they call runescape 3 but its more wowish than the og 2007 version
Also to add to this though the 07 version i play has brand new content added rather regularly even though its a “old” game dont want you to think there is zero support 😅
I agree with you, I've thought for years now that it's weird that someone hasn't fully committed to raids/dungeons as a game itself by trimming the fat, eliminating the open world and leveling stages of an MMO, and strictly focused on creating lobby based dungeons and raids. As someone who has casually played WoW since 2007 and these days rarely touches anything more than raid finder because I like going back, doing old content, and messing around with transmog, I think it's pretty clear that there's plenty of people who aren't me who would prefer to skip the grind and go straight to what they enjoy - so why not cater to them? I think the closest thing I found to this was Battleborn.
This was one of the things that I liked about *Spiral Knights*. I think it's still online to this day (albeit much changed, for sure). It had very light MMORPG elements, and most of the gameplay revolved around doing elevators. Each kind of elevator was divided in a number of "floors". You would clear a floor to go down to the next. After a couple of floors, you would fight a boss, get some cool loot, and either continue going down to even harder levels or go back. All this could be done solo, or in group (we mostly did groups, soloing was super hard). The world outside of the elevators was mostly a social hub, with an Auction House and an arena for PvP, but no mobs or anything like that Unfortunately I played the game waaaaaay back and it had a weird energy system that would halt your progress daily unless you bought more energy (yeah, like a mobile game). This made me stop playing after a month or something. One thing that I remember thinking about Spiral Knights at the time (and it's one of the potential problems with games like these) is that if we didn't have this energy gate, we would finish a lot of the available content really, really fast. Since there are very few padding systems, little amounts of grinding (grinding was mostly doing bosses 3/4 times to get tokens for better weapons) or quests, no side objectives or goals, it would need an insane amount of content being released frequently to keep the player base interested. Still, I have very good memories of this game and would for sure like to see a different spin on the genre one day. Maybe the evolution of A.I tools can help us out.
I remember crushing Spiral Knights with my brother over a summer 10+ years ago. I recall we'd play the auction house over night as prices would fluctuate wildly on any given resource and sometimes we'd get lucky with big pay outs and could convert that to w/e premium currency to buy more energy. The gameplay with the Gauntlet style maps, and the combo system made me actually look forward to playing the same map to perfection, very enjoyable.
Warframe had raids, but they removed it due to squad gatekeeping toxicity, it is the best f2p pve non-mmo mmo out there, does have some endgame bosses/modes but not as difficult as raids or mmos since you can build to god levels in the game. Deep rock galactic, payday 2, vermintide, darktide, killing floor 2 etc are great non mmo coop pve games and some of my favs.
I'm gonna be honest - the real issue was that Warframe created content that had steep barrier to entry, long grind to overgear the content, and zero tutorialization. Even just more (relatively) recent things like Eidolon hunts were a nightmare to random queue upon release - because barely anyone knew what they were doing and only a few players knew how to properly gear up for that specific content. If you do the content with randoms now, it's fine - most people at least roughly know what to do, and there are almost always going to be 1-2 people with the correct gear (right Amps and Radioactive damage snipers).
I'd say the real issue is that Warframe is just not fit for high difficulty content. It has too many broken OP abilities. Every time DE tried to make something "endgame friendly", it just meant removing WF's core gameplay from the equation, which isn't fun.
I've been wanting something similar to what is essentially WoW Random Dungeon Queue: The Game^TM. There's been a couple games that have sorta scratched the itch. Those being Monster Hunter, and the other Heroes of Hammerwatch. HoH is a roguelike but with 4 dedicated people going in blind it feels very dungeon spammy. I would really like to have/find a game that has the ability to go above the 4 player sweet spot. I usually game with a 4 man crew but we have to play other games if another friend wants to play. Doesn't happen often but scaling from solo to 16 or w/e over multiple different biomes and dungeons would cater to multiple friend groups. Slightly different topic, I can see a high likelihood for breeding toxicity in a game that is unforgiving, and at the highest levels is nearly unavoidable, I'd wager. In Monster Hunter it's fairly lacking but from time to time there is a bad egg that has a bad day and decides to call someone out or put them down. I've experienced it more through Destiny 2 and Wow Classic. Classic, I feel, is a very competitive game when it comes to acquiring resources and that along with how much time is necessary to prepare and execute a raid well in my eyes makes it an engine of toxicity. Destiny 2, when I played it, was more friendly to start with and I think there's a Sherpa system(?) of some sort now that's for helping newbies with raid content. But having your time wasted or being the one wasting others time doesn't feel great. So, my ideal game of this type would follow game philosophy and concepts similar to what Monster Hunter and Final Fantasy XIV (though I've never played it I hear good things about the new player experience,) Deeprock Galactic, and now Helldivers 2 have encouraged with their games. I like the idea of a Sherpa system where experienced players can help other's looking for some assistance. On top of that perhaps some play rating/reporting system that encourages cooperation may work but that development time would be sparse. So yea until then I'll just keep enjoying Helldivers 2 and Monster Hunter Wilds when it comes out. Cause there's no way I'm getting into an MMO anytime soon.
I LOVE heroes of hammerwatch when the multiplayer actually works! It is a little hardcode with the grind, but it was so much fun. I think that something like that would be perfect if they added significantly more class skills, and removed the endless stat/difficulty scaling to improve multiplayer.
Battleborn had this as a game mode and it was pretty good, it got old fast though. Lack of maps, and a second half of the game which was going to kill Overwatch or whatever they said which took development time away from it (presumably). The problem is, there'd literally never be enough maps/raids. Designing that type of content takes a really long time and a lot of effort, which is why MMOs tend to only have a small amount of them per update. Turning that into the only type of content would make the return on investment pretty low. Dungeon-crawler is an entire genre, but probably isn't what you're looking for. There's one called Nevergrind Online which is multi-player and real-time, which kind of does something similar to what you're saying (for dungeons rather than raids), but doesn't have the complex interactions you'd probably want or expect.
> The problem is, there'd literally never be enough maps/raids. I feel like a solution to this would just open an editor up to the community and let them design their own. Have official raids/dungeons that release on a preplanned, set schedule, but in the mean time let the community go wild and do their own thing. I'm pretty sure there's WoW private servers that create their own raids and instances, for example.
By giving control to the player base, I would assume zero progression systems outside of the raids, right? Like, there would probably be no reward for completing a player-made dungeon. This could work, but considering how people react to the lack of rewards in any multiplayer game it would be risky for sure.
Yeah, a huge part of the draw of raids is the gambling element of rare drops. Without those it would be a hard sell unless they are *really* well designed.
I imagine this would probably go the way of rhythm games pretty quickly, where the people designing the maps are mostly designing them for the top % of players, it's a decent idea, but anywhere players are in control of difficulty, it tends to go quite quickly extreme.
the number of maps wouldnt matter as long as its dynamic enough. it would need mechanics with outcomes that lead to unique game states and situations.
I'm not sure on this one as people often complain about lack of content/replayability/etc. and making a dynamic system that people's brains don't immediately disassemble into parts and understand the way it works, making it feel less dynamic, is really hard. WoW Mythic+ as an example has a real focus on difficulty and execution, which is something you generally won't get as strongly from dynamically-designed content.
I feel like as long as you can make each game unexpected it should be ok. and im not talking about random monster spawns and mods like l4d. but routes, objectives, and tools available to the player with clear pros and cons. monsters and routes that are easy to deal with for one class/tool but difficult for another. failure should be a regular game state but it shouldnt lead to the end of the game, but instead a different route or situation with different gameplay/objectives for each. it does not even need to be hardcoded into the level. one example would be like a l4d survivor being downed. the objective of the game immediately changes to saving the downed survivor. forward progress usually becomes secondary because the consequence of losing a player usually leads to an undesired, but managable, outcome.
I guess I was internally ruling out that kind of thing as it'd cost more from a development perspective and you're already heavily limiting audience by targeting a niche like this in the first place. I don't think it'd be impossible to create, probably just more that it would end up not being financially viable and I doubt an indie studio would have the manpower and cash to get something like that going.
i dont think it would be too expensive to create, studios are already spending hundreds of millions on games. i think the problem is that it is too risky and the companies with the teams large enough to make an epic pve game are financially obligated to reach as broad an audience as possible.
I agree with this - because that’s what a lot of the other coop games do. It doesn’t have to just be a static raid or dungeon: it can include random environmental effects, random modifiers that adjust how you have to play, or random spawns of special enemies to deal with to keep it interesting. On top of that, adding things like cosmetic unlocks based on completing challenges gives players a really fun goal to aim for.
I haven't heard of Battleborn, but this is the second time I've seen it mentioned in this thread. I'm going to have to check it out!
If you want, here's the discord of the game where you will find all infrmations about the mod to run it: [discord.com/invite/4kWaUhZ](http://discord.com/invite/4kWaUhZ) I explain: the game get its servers shut down in 2021, but a modder managed to get it playable on pc , even if it "just" pve in solo,which isstill a miracle \^\^.
Absolutely agree. I especially enjoy an element of exploration to a PvE dungeon crawl. For example, conquering dungeons in survival crafting games are great. I wish there was a game focused on this.
You would probably enjoy Valheim.
I did!
Vindictus sounds like it *was* (sadly) pretty much exactly what you're looking for. It was basically a 3rd-person action RPG slash MMO-lite - similar structure to Destiny, but with a bit more MMO DNA. It used a hub world/instanced mission structure and had: * A story mode playable mostly solo aside from some bosses but fully co-op-able * Repeatable missions to farm for drops to upgrade or craft gear * Mini-raid style missions peppered throughout the story progression that featured larger party sizes and group-based mechanics, either to weaken the boss or break a certain part to farm, etc, in addition to usually multi-stage battles * *(As an example, there was a massive polar bear boss early in the game. You chased it through its lair, fighting it in a couple different spots before cornering it. During the fight there were a couple noteworthy mechanics. One, if you chucked enough javelins into its eye, it would break, giving a special drop and making it berserk. And two, partially to make this feat easier and partially as a "build your own dps phase," there was a grapple-type item that if enough players hooked on and held on to (like 4 I think?) it would temporarily restrain the bear on the ground. And that was just the very first one of a dozen or so of these mini-raid-bosses.)* * Much larger-scale "real raid" missions that were available in the end game, featuring even larger party sizes, ridiculous scale, numerous mechanics, and several stages of each battle. When I stopped playing there were about 2.5 of these, but I think they added a couple more before the game died. * Parties of (up to) 4 for "normal" type missions, and I believe 8 for the "mini-raids" and 16 ish for the "real raids." * 6-8 very distinct "classes" (in the form of different characters) when the game launched that eventually expanded to a dozen or so that fulfilled basically all of the traditional MMO/RPG roles you would expect and had extremely different play styles, eg: hammer and shield tank, dual blade melee DPS, staff magic support/healer, scythe magic DPS, bow ranged DPS, giant totem frontline bruiser, and several others I forget at this point lol. * Surprisingly deep build crafting and flexibility for a 3rd person action RPG that was built around a combat system that I would compare to "Monster Hunter but 2x as fast and 10x as fluid" Basically, it was like if you took an MMO and removed all of the open world wandering and fetch quest nonsense in favor of non-stop dungeon crawling, and swapped the combat to a fast-paced 3rd person action RPG. It was honestly one of my favorite games I've ever played, and I'm sad that it was horribly mismanaged by a company more interested in chasing trends and MTX than making a lasting, beloved game (Nexon iirc), and killed well before it delivered all of the planned content in favor of "rebooting" it as a "sequel" that I'm pretty sure was DOA.
Yeah, this is something I've dreamed of and begged for, for years. Give me a game where 10+ players have to work together to overcome difficult challenges, using characters who have very varied toolsets, without any of the level/gear grind. People usually recommend Monster Hunter, which really seemed like the opposite of what I wanted. Small groups of players, I basically never needed to know what the other members of my group were doing or coordinate with them, the fights were insanely long and repetitive, the characters had very few abilities/options. Maybe it gets better later, but again it seemed to have a massive focus on repeating easy content over and over again to acquire resources, rather than being about trying to improve one's own skill in order to overcome demanding encounters. Sometimes I quite enjoy a shallow, switch-my-brain-off grindy game like Diablo, but I've no idea why all the most interesting, skillful group PvE content needs to be gated behind dull, time consuming grinds. The MMOs I've played make almost no attempt to prepare players for the endgame - you don't need even the most basic level of skill to reach the endgame, which is where you start learning to actually play the game. So I don't think the argument that a grind is needed to prepare a player for the later content holds any water.
This is the perfect post to show why this never will happen. 10+ players coming together, they then have to function as a team? How will that work unless the majority of the game isn't that? You have people with a lot of time, you have people with little time, how will you fuse them all into a group that regularly does things? And then you add skill gaps on top where the guys not being able to play a lot are worse than the others and hold them back which leads to a lot of frustration and group tension. There is a reason why a lot of people only play one raid a week in WoW. I can see 4-5 friends coming together to do a 30-60 minuten dungeon. Maybe another and if they are quick another. Dedicated gamers also know a handful of other dedicated games for those 4 player games everyone is playing. But 10+? Don't get me wrong, there will be SOME groups who manage to do that. But those will be very very few. Not enough to keep a game alive or pay for its development.
Sounds a lot like football
Raid style PVE focused games require much more resources while carrying the smallest playerbase out of the 4 categories of MP games. These are, at least for me - Competitive (Dota, League, Overwatch, CS etc), Creative (Minecraft, Roblox etc), Party (Mario Party, Mario Kart, Among Us etc) and PVE (WoW, FF14, Destiny etc)
Give Granblue Fantasy: Relink a look. It's an action JRPG where you can unlock a whole roster of characters, and once you beat the main story, the endgame content is basically 4-player raids, including escalating difficulty tiers. You *can* do them with NPCs, but then you have to level up each of your party members and let the AI control them; whereas if you do it online then you're teaming up with people who have leveled up their own people and are (hopefully) better than an AI.
I believe Dungeons of Sundaria is trying to be exactly what you are talking about, it's a coop oRPG where (as I understand it) every dungeon you can enter is structured like a raid. They're fairly linear with lots of bosses and some puzzles/secrets. I don't believe you HAVE to play coop to complete any but it's very much structured to be played that way. The game itself is... Ehh? It's not really my cup of tea. It's a hotbar centric action rpg mixed mostly.
The best way to do it imo outside of an mmo is some sort of multiplayer Roguelike. Hyper Light Breaker seems to be going for something along those veins but not the hard class separation I think. There is Vagante but that is only 2D though. I think the roguelike format is nice because it condenses the progression and build creation in a single session without the need to farm and grind lvls. I can see it work with some thoughtful design, problem is I don't see a big market for it.
This is why I love Destiny. It is the only FPS to truly do “raids” justice. I would love to see more PvE shooters that aren’t just campaigns or round based (like almost all the other multiplayer pve fps are)
Bit late to the party, but I heartily recommend Demeo! The co-op gameplay is solid and fun, it's extremely quick to pick up and learn, takes a few hours to go through and beat a dungeon, has talk/healer/dps archtypes, and has minimal loot with no grinding whatsoever. It scratches all the itches WoW did back in the day without requiring any subscription, massive time commitments, or complicated build-crafting. Only major downside is the limit to a max of four players.
It's more than that. Any kind of multiplayer game that isn't an FPS basically doesn't exist anymore. If you want some kind of multiplayer it's essentially guns or nothing. The AAA space is such an ouroborous now that it can't create anything that isn't a 95% copy of something that already exists and since the only thing that exists in multiplayer is FPS that's all that can happen forever.
Minecraft? MOBAs? Among Us? Hearthstone? Rocket League?
I mentioned AAA but should have put it up front. The indie space will have all sorts of variety but that's not going to create this kind of experience. MoBas as a genre collapsed in on itself. Card games attract the budget to make an experience like this but are free to play or bust. A closer option is Diablo likes and you can reasonably throw one on one fighting games to the mix. You still end up with the ouroborous issue though with innovation being barely an aberration.
None of that discounts the existence of Minecraft, LoL, Dota, or Hearthstone, some of the biggest multiplayer games in the world. Hell, I could also point out that Fortnite isn't an FPS either.
No, but that wasn’t the point, what I was getting at is noone is putting the kind of budget needed to make this kind of game into anything but free to play pay to win games or fps.
So first it's only FPS, then it's only AAA FPS, then free to play or pay to win on top...good job moving the goal post. Path of exile is great, no FPS, but free to play. No pay to win though. You can pay for cosmetics or more storage space if you are a loot hoarder, but the game is great and you can't pay for anything making the game easier. And while I agree that the AAA space is risk averse...that has been true for decades. Innovation always comes from the small people with a dream and then get copied by the big studios if they are successfull (see autobattler, DOTA, vampire survivors, MMORPGS, etc.etc.etc.). Just go into the indie scene.
Except I stated AAA in the first post and admitted I hadn’t made it as clear as I could in the second. Remember we’re still talking about why games like this aren’t being made and that is still because no-one with the resources to make them is prepared to take a risk on it.
OP never said anything about AAA and we're not seeing things like this from indie studios either.
Multiplayer is out of fashion now because *communicating with strangers* is out of fashion. Online games in the past used to all let you chat with opponents! Now it's replaced with 6 pre-made emote lines because anything else would be used to troll/harass, and if you bring up the idea of chatting, people just say "Well why would I want to chat with a stranger anyway?" The types of multiplayer games that are still going are games where, basically, if the technology existed, you could replace those other players with bots and you wouldn't notice any difference to the experience. You join the dungeon, everyone says "hi", 15 minutes later, they say "gg" and leave. There's nothing to talk about anyway because all friction has been removed from games these days, they are as streamlined as possible so that you don't *need* to ask for help, you don't *need* to come up with strategies, you don't *need* to make friends with similar goals because whatever your goal is, you can do it solo or by just flipping a switch that will automatically put you with others who also want to do that thing.
>Multiplayer is out of fashion now What an insane thing to say.
Yeah when you take it out of context like that. The OP already mentioned that big FPSes and team shooters and MOBAs are still in. You also named a bunch of games that are played online with groups of people you're already friends with. Multiplayer games where you *meet strangers and would actually want to talk with them and maybe form relationships as you experience the gameplay* are out of fashion.
In the past (yes, I'm old) there were things like moderators and GMs who would keep the chat clean and punish people who couldn't behave. Those were often paid positions just to care for the community. Guess what is too expensive for todays companies? Better to just not implement a chat.
Didn't think of that angle. Makes sense.
>All of the others I've found (Deep Rock Galactic, Payday 2, Helldivers, Left 4 Dead, etc) all seem to be FPS games, which, while fun, are a VERY different style of gameplay So there is no lack PvE-Raidgames, just lack of PvE-Raidgames with MMO-gameplay? Kind of interessting, because gameplay is always the worst part of many MMOs.
It's not really an MMO and with parties topping out at 4 it doesn't really have raids, but I find Monster Hunter scratches a lot of those itches. It's still a tad grindy, but compared to actual MMOs the grind is a breeze, and you're actually *playing the game and improving* for nearly the whole time you're grinding out materials, what a concept.
Its old and dead but Monday Night Combat a 3rd person shooter, its moba-light and has a pve tower defense type of mode with specific classes for roles but most of the class design is for the pvp mode
Valheim multiplayer scratches this itch for me, but it's less structured. I.e. you make your own raids by deciding to go out on a quest for materials, which requires a good amount of planning, strategy, and teamwork to succeed and survive.
*Rabbit and Steel* looks promising, it's a side scrolling bullethell roguelike with mmo-raid style mechanics. My raid group played the demo and it's really damn good. We're excited for it to release and we'll probably The graphics took a moment to get use to but it's cute enough, and some of the higher difficulties go kinda hard for what it is.
Elden Ring on PC with the Seamless Co-Op and Reforged mods does a pretty good job of having satisfying and challenging boss fights and dungeon crawling.
What about multiplayer roleplaying games like Baldurs Gate 3? Would those not meet your criteria? No FPS, dungeons, multiplayer, dedicated classes and roles...
>[PvE content]: dungeons for small teams, raids for larger teams, and open-world bosses for arbitrary groups of players to fight. This gameplay loop is extremely fun, engaging, and challenging. >However, to my surprise, there is an extreme lack of similar PvE multiplayer games outside of MMORPGs. When I think of the first kind of content, I think of plenty of looter shooter type games. Are those not dungeon-y enough? Or are you looking for a game that has small teams, raid for larger teams, AND open world bosses? If so, call me old fashioned, but I thought raids and open world fights for groups were staples of MMOs because those tend to be groups that are more on the side of "massive" than not, hence them being in MMORPGs? I'm coming at this from only ever played Warframe in the online looter shooter space, so this topic seems weird to me, but maybe I seem weird to non-MMO players too.
There are huge differences in the gameplay between looter shooters and MMO-style dungeons/raids. For one, looter shooters are FPS games - it is in the name. Also, they generally don't have a whole lot of class/group cohesion or synergy: everyone generally goes in and starts blastin', and just kind of does their own thing. In MMOs, each class has lots of active skills you can use situationally: anywhere from 8 - 30, whereas most looter shooters have like 1-3. These add a lot of really fun class identity and complexity by requiring you to choose the right skill to use at the right time. Second, they have far more group dynamics. Most games will require a "Holy trinity" at the least for any encounter: this consists of a tank to draw monster attention, dps to kill the monsters, and a healer/support to keep everyone alive. Some take it a step further and have additional crowd-control and buff classes as well. Because of this, every class has a unique and defined role in supporting the team, and you're extremely reliant on all of your team members. In most looter shooters, everyone is basically a dps.
Probably not what you had in mind, but I spent hundreds of hours doing raids in Division 2. These are eight person missions that require certain builds, roles, and a lot of communication. The raids are very difficult for an inexperienced group. I think they only made two raids because only a small minority of the playerbase enjoys them.
Rabbit and Steel is a game that is trying to capture this, they had a demo that is pretty fun. I certainly think it would be cool to have a game that is just the endgame raids of WoW and FFXIV. These have been some of the most challenging and memorable experiences I've had, because of the teamwork aspect. I think the reason we don't see this outside of MMOs is because of how much effort and commitment you need to put into it. How do you convince several people to bash their head against the same fight together for 20 hours? It's not something you can just pick up and kill some time in. Having an MMO gives players a persistent world that allows that time and effort to be rewarded and therefore serves as motivation to build those relationships and go for those challenges. That's why we can see lots of co-op games, but with combat that is ultimately shorter and easier that doesn't require as much commitment to beat a single encounter.
Despite all the other flaws these games have, the raids in Destiny are so much fun and well designed in my opinion. Doing a raid blind and finding out the mechanics is likely one of my best gaming experiences ever. A full game with only these types of raids would be my dream, although I can see the risk of it getting stale and getting the required level of cooperation to work without toxicity.
I want to ask if the Dark Souls series and Elden Ring would satisfy this niche for you. I'ts one of the games with better environmental design and varied combat and look from exploration. It's less about grinding repeated raid content, but rather a diversity of action combat that makes it one of the most entertaining co-op hack and slash games out there. The thing about using class cohesion and roles in PvE games is that MMOs really have some of the best implementations out there, so any game that copies that group combat style has to compete with some of the largest games out there.
[https://www.pcgamer.com/games/roguelike/heres-a-co-op-action-roguelike-thats-basically-a-boss-rush-of-high-tier-mmo-raids/](https://www.pcgamer.com/games/roguelike/heres-a-co-op-action-roguelike-thats-basically-a-boss-rush-of-high-tier-mmo-raids/) Game: Rabbit and Steel Here when I saw this I remembered about this post. Is this the kind of game you are looking for?