You see it in patch notes across all mmos: Elite mobs become reduced to non elite. Group content gets nerfed so it can be done solo. Raids and dungeons get adjusted as time goes by, offering passive buffs to players and debuffs to bosses. Experience gain and amounts get adjusted so that people can level up more quickly. That all adds up to mmos becoming easier in my book. Were they hard before? Maybe not hard per se, but more tedious and time consuming.
Your forgetting that most mmo's are established now. You have majority of players that are max level, making it not as easy to find a group for new or alt players leveling. The option for slow leveling is still there, but then we get those poeple complaining how it's too grindy.
So either way it's a LOSE LOSE situation.
The thing that happens with this though is:
Player is Playing Game A - which has a certain difficulty, speed of leveling, etc, etc, etc. It does not matter if the game is a billion years old, Game A has set the player's expectations for when they go to Game B.
That's what we usually call an Elitest A------!
Pretty much every MMORPG has gone through this,.... patches, expantions, changes that players love and hate. What's so new about that?
You want a challenge leveling like the old days, go and trying killing mobs 10lvls higher than you, I am sure that would bring back memories.
Game B designs to those expectations. Then Game B goes through the same thing - getting easier. Game B sets the new lower expectations for the Player.
Game C comes along.
It is a nasty cycle.
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
Removed +heal gear and +spell damage gear, repacing it with +spell power gear. Easier because a healing caster no longer needs 2 sets of gear.
Much easier to itemize the dungeons as well as better loot distribution.
Doubled quest XP in the middle Burning Crusade. Easier because leveling got faster.
Yes, they increased xp for the previous content, games which are end-game focused do this.
Added a dual spec system so changing specs back and forth is no longer needed.
This had more to do with grouping and the lack of specs for important roles because the talent system was contributing to the problem of not finding groups.
Removed pet loyalty system making it easier for hunters to train pets.
Yep
Removed pets being tamed at their initial level replacing it with pet jumping level, making it easier to train pets.
The way hunters were designed, having to train up a pet from trained level to your own level was just ridiculous.
Removed ammunition and ammunition bags, making it easier for classes who use ranged weapons to keep space open in inventory.
Hunters and Warlocks were unduely punished for their choice in class by forcing them to take up ever-valuable bag slots just to do normal things.
Removed questing for epic mounts for Warlocks and Paladins, making it easier to get the mounts.
It was a change because the original quests required a group to obtain the mounts from content that was 2 expansions past.
Changed normal mounts from 40 to 20, making traveling easier.
Changed epic mounts from 60 to 40, making traveling easier.
Changed flying mounts from 70 to 60, making traveling easier.
Adding flying in Azeroth, making traveling easier.
yep
Changed channeled heal for hunters to instant cast making it easier for hunters to keep pets healed.
The pet heal was changed with many changes to the hunter. The hunter went through many iterations from having a pet focused tree to a melee focused tree. The BM hunter healed for quite alot while the others didn't heal for much at all. The hunter was changed to a strait pet class where they relied more on thier pets and their pets staying alive for increased damage potential. You could say it was "made easier" but you'd be barking up the wrong tree.
Converted some of the Vanilla dungeons to shorter runs making it easier and faster to do a full run.
Changed to match the leveling curve of the dungeon level but yes, easier.
Added crafted BOE epics so non-raiders could have easier access to high quality gear sold on AH.
This is an argument outside of "making the game easier". This is more of a hardcore vs casual argument item.
Added a cross-server dungeon finder system making it easier to find groups for dungeon runs.
Doesn't have much to do with making the "game easier" just promotes quicker queue times.
Added dungeon rewards for running randoms.
Removed elite mobs from dungeon entrances.
Improvements to the game to help dungeon queues, not really making it easier.
Reworked the quest system providing easy access to location information needed to complete quests.
This was in the game since day one, Blizz just added one of the most widely used UI's to their own static UI package.
Reworked leveling in Cata so level cap can be achieved in significantly less time than the 240 hours which was common during BC.
Standard practice in end-game based games. Easier to get to the "real game" but doesn't make the game itself easier.
This is just from memory. There are probably some I missed.
You see it in patch notes across all mmos: Elite mobs become reduced to non elite. Group content gets nerfed so it can be done solo. Raids and dungeons get adjusted as time goes by, offering passive buffs to players and debuffs to bosses. Experience gain and amounts get adjusted so that people can level up more quickly. That all adds up to mmos becoming easier in my book. Were they hard before? Maybe not hard per se, but more tedious and time consuming.
Your forgetting that most mmo's are established now. You have majority of players that are max level, making it not as easy to find a group for new or alt players leveling. The option for slow leveling is still there, but then we get those poeple complaining how it's too grindy.
So either way it's a LOSE LOSE situation.
The thing that happens with this though is:
Player is Playing Game A - which has a certain difficulty, speed of leveling, etc, etc, etc. It does not matter if the game is a billion years old, Game A has set the player's expectations for when they go to Game B.
That's what we usually call an Elitest A------!
Pretty much every MMORPG has gone through this,.... patches, expantions, changes that players love and hate. What's so new about that?
You want a challenge leveling like the old days, go and trying killing mobs 10lvls higher than you, I am sure that would bring back memories.
Game B designs to those expectations. Then Game B goes through the same thing - getting easier. Game B sets the new lower expectations for the Player.
Game C comes along.
It is a nasty cycle.
We are just going to go downhill! Every game is, has, or going to.
Yanno WoW would be a fair challenge without the addons or the features born from addons. Though blizzard gave the people the power, so it was the people who made it easier. Demand speaks friends.
Even without the addons, there has been the increasing demand for the games to be easier as the companies have attempted to attract the more casual player. It is companies attempting to attract and cater to the casual. Money speaks.
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
It came from themeparks. MMORPGs didnt get easier, they got redifined. Sheep will always follow. Probably what you ran into with the guy from rift. I guess if there isnt a bot program that will level you to cap its considered hard now? Rift was for kids imo. At least WOW got harder so adults could enjoy the gameplay too.
Nothing hard about Sandbox games, especially the old ones, they more like TIME SINK games, ment for people who had more than enough time in their lives to play.
Usually the:
College Student.
Unemployed.
Retired.
No arguement from me on the timesink part. I was referring to the human interaction. Gameplay was only 10% of progression. Click on stuff, travel, click on stuff. Easy. Other people are far more complicated and random.
Kill, get treasure, repeat. pretty easy. Having to come up with a marketing campaign to get people to come to your new shop instead of their regular supplier, a little bit harder. Or just a time sink too. whatever you wanna call it. People can decide for themselves.
And people just devoted all of their entertainment time to an mmo. Still had jobs, families ect...Just didnt watch TV or go out drinking as much. Just as many powergamers in themeparks (actually more). Dont remember people dying from exhaustion in the old games. But it seems you've made up your mind.
Themepark games are easier. That was their key to success. Interacting with others is all thats different. It's more difficult, more time consuming, and unlike an npc, if your a dick, they wont interact with you.
Take away loot as rewards in a thempark and it fails instantly. 90% of the content becomes a waste. The vast majority would ask why the hell they added quests. It wasnt for the fun and good story, And judge them on the quality of their content rather than the color of loot the quest rewards. I dont think they would judge nicely either. I could be wrong, just like you could be.
Either way they're just games. If you remove people from one it fails, if you remove loot from the other it fails. What's the definition of an mmo again?
2 of your points I consider valid while half of one is sort of valid. Everything else has very little to do with difficulty, more to do with time investment. As I mentioned above, if you feel time is what makes things hard, go visit your local dmv daily and encounter the hardest raid in RL you can ever do!
DMV... ugh! I'm okay with referring to the changes as removing things that were annoying time sinks and tedius. I'm also okay that these be referred to as making things faster.
OP asked for why people think games are getting easier. Maybe they're not easier in the most strict sense of the term. However, faster and less tedius is certainly the pattern for changes in WoW.
On a side note, there are things that are much harder than before. Healing for one is far more difficult than it used to be. It used to be nothing to heal 5 mans and have 50% mana left on a pull with a decent group. Not so any longer, at least when I played last.
Ken Fisher - Semi retired old fart Network Administrator, now working in Network Security. I don't Forum PVP. If you feel I've attacked you, it was probably by accident. When I don't understand, I ask. Such is not intended as criticism.
Of course they are easier now, please let's not fool ourselves. If you have been playing MMO's for a long time, the change is obvious.
We moved away from group centric multiplayer to single player in a multiplayer enviroment.
Since most games made now allow you to solo to the max level, there is little need for getting to know the players around you. Heck most games don't even have any downtime anymore so there is hardly any friendly banter among the group. The social aspect of MMO's has really diminished. Your reputation doesn't mean that much anymore. What kind of community does this build?
Sure MMO's shouldn't punish solo play, there is a demand for that depending on your available gaming time. But, MMO's should reward MMO play and try to build an enviroment that fosters it.
Of course they are easier now, please let's not fool ourselves. If you have been playing MMO's for a long time, the change is obvious.
We moved away from group centric multiplayer to single player in a multiplayer enviroment.
Since most games made now allow you to solo to the max level, there is little need for getting to know the players around you. Heck most games don't even have any downtime anymore so there is hardly any friendly banter amoung the group. The social aspect of MMO's has really diminished. Your reputation doesn't mean that much anymore. What kind of community does this build?
Sure MMO's shouldn't punish solo play, there is a demand for that depending on your available gaming time. But, MMO's should reward MMO play and try to build an enviroment that fosters it.
I agree 100%
I think what frusterates me most about this toppic (not just this one but others like it) alot of people say that time doesn't equal skill. I say it does (to some extent)
Take guitar for instance, you want to learn guitar? just about anyone can learn, sure it takes LONGER for others then for some...but its all about the amount of time you put in,
When I say learning guitar is harder then learning guitar hero, its because one takes longer to learn. take the average guy off of the street, he plays guitar hero for 3 weeks, he'll be pretty good. put him infront of a guitar for three years, he'll be pretty good.
Time DOES = skill. End of story.
Then you add in that older MMO's where more groupe centered, which meant you had to get along with other people and stratigize. I would say WITHOUT A DOUBT older MMO's where deffinitly harder.
Of course they are easier now, please let's not fool ourselves. If you have been playing MMO's for a long time, the change is obvious.
We moved away from group centric multiplayer to single player in a multiplayer enviroment.
Since most games made now allow you to solo to the max level, there is little need for getting to know the players around you. Heck most games don't even have any downtime anymore so there is hardly any friendly banter among the group. The social aspect of MMO's has really diminished. Your reputation doesn't mean that much anymore. What kind of community does this build?
Sure MMO's shouldn't punish solo play, there is a demand for that depending on your available gaming time. But, MMO's should reward MMO play and try to build an enviroment that fosters it.
I hear people say stuff like this about WoW as well.
Of course they are easier now, please let's not fool ourselves. If you have been playing MMO's for a long time, the change is obvious.
We moved away from group centric multiplayer to single player in a multiplayer enviroment.
Since most games made now allow you to solo to the max level, there is little need for getting to know the players around you. Heck most games don't even have any downtime anymore so there is hardly any friendly banter among the group. The social aspect of MMO's has really diminished. Your reputation doesn't mean that much anymore. What kind of community does this build?
Sure MMO's shouldn't punish solo play, there is a demand for that depending on your available gaming time. But, MMO's should reward MMO play and try to build an enviroment that fosters it.
I hear people say stuff like this about WoW as well.
but I have to ask them.
"Have you beatRagnaros in CATA yet?"
That is a small part of the game.
The better question would be - compared to Vanilla WoW, can you level toons in Cata while drunk and playing with your toes?
Not everybody raids, but everybody that plays the game - plays the game.
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
Of course they are easier now, please let's not fool ourselves. If you have been playing MMO's for a long time, the change is obvious.
We moved away from group centric multiplayer to single player in a multiplayer enviroment.
Since most games made now allow you to solo to the max level, there is little need for getting to know the players around you. Heck most games don't even have any downtime anymore so there is hardly any friendly banter among the group. The social aspect of MMO's has really diminished. Your reputation doesn't mean that much anymore. What kind of community does this build?
Sure MMO's shouldn't punish solo play, there is a demand for that depending on your available gaming time. But, MMO's should reward MMO play and try to build an enviroment that fosters it.
I hear people say stuff like this about WoW as well.
but I have to ask them.
"Have you beatRagnaros in CATA yet?"
That is a small part of the game.
The better question would be - compared to Vanilla WoW, can you level toons in Cata while drunk and playing with your toes?
Not everybody raids, but everybody that plays the game - plays the game.
Wait i'm confused, so now the WHOLE game has to be.. "hard"? I don't understand.. i really don't.
yeah actually...
I mean if I played through the campaign in Halo, and all of the enemies were grunts exept the last "boss" which was a brute. sure he was hard to kill...but the game is easy..
Of course they are easier now, please let's not fool ourselves. If you have been playing MMO's for a long time, the change is obvious.
We moved away from group centric multiplayer to single player in a multiplayer enviroment.
Since most games made now allow you to solo to the max level, there is little need for getting to know the players around you. Heck most games don't even have any downtime anymore so there is hardly any friendly banter among the group. The social aspect of MMO's has really diminished. Your reputation doesn't mean that much anymore. What kind of community does this build?
Sure MMO's shouldn't punish solo play, there is a demand for that depending on your available gaming time. But, MMO's should reward MMO play and try to build an enviroment that fosters it.
I hear people say stuff like this about WoW as well.
but I have to ask them.
"Have you beatRagnaros in CATA yet?"
That is a small part of the game.
The better question would be - compared to Vanilla WoW, can you level toons in Cata while drunk and playing with your toes?
Not everybody raids, but everybody that plays the game - plays the game.
Wait i'm confused, so now the WHOLE game has to be.. "hard"? I don't understand.. i really don't.
Expo is basing his idea that games have not gotten easier based on raids. Raids are a small part of the game for many players. Many do not even raid. So I was asking him to look at the games outside of raiding...to see whether or not he would agree that they have become easier than they were...
...since generally speaking, almost everybody that has talked about the games being easier - they've not been talking about raiding in the least.
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
You have to use perspective to answer this question....
My first mmo was EQ1 in 1999. The content was majorily focused on group play. That didnt stop thousands of people from trying to solo through alot of content. Not to say I didnt group or raid, but probably 85% of the time I was soloing.
It took a long time, many deaths, and many corpse runs to hit level cap. Back then we didnt even think of level cap. We thought of having fun that day/night. Everything wasnt about leveling. Overcoming challenges at whatever level was very important.
So, put it in perspective... Today we have insta-ports. No true death penalties, leveling to cap is done in weeks, bite-size solo content, tokens, and class-balancing because devs think each class should be able to do the same damage etc.
These days I only play the less-forgiving mmo's because even though the end-game content of some of the 'easier' mmo's is the only challenge, I dont feel challenged as I level.
Nothing hard about Sandbox games, especially the old ones, they more like TIME SINK games, ment for people who had more than enough time in their lives to play.
Usually the:
College Student.
Unemployed.
Retired.
Did someone really just say that one of the target demographics for MMOs is... retired people?
The age group that is least likely to be able to use a computer, is a more important group than the 20-40y/o working male?
Sir, if you are going to pull facts out of your ass, please make them less... silly.
Everything creates huge amounts of negativity on the internet, that's what the internet is for: Negativity, porn and lolcats.
You have to use perspective to answer this question....
My first mmo was EQ1 in 1999. The content was majorily focused on group play. That didnt stop thousands of people from trying to solo through alot of content. Not to say I didnt group or raid, but probably 85% of the time I was soloing.
It took a long time, many deaths, and many corpse runs to hit level cap. Back then we didnt even think of level cap. We thought of having fun that day/night. Everything wasnt about leveling. Overcoming challenges at whatever level was very important.
So, put it in perspective... Today we have insta-ports. No true death penalties, leveling to cap is done in weeks, bite-size solo content, tokens, and class-balancing because devs think each class should be able to do the same damage etc.
These days I only play the less-forgiving mmo's because even though the end-game content of some of the 'easier' mmo's is the only challenge, I dont feel challenged as I level.
A challenging game is if you are constantly challenged. Meaning combat etc is hard and you have to know what you do to have success.
Having to run around for half an hour just to reach a certain area is boring, mind numbing, and no challenge whatsoever.
Death penalties need to be there, but too hard death penalties are just as bad as too trivial ones. If you play for hours and lose EVERYTHING you worked for before, just because of one single death, you will step extremely carefully through the game and never take any risks at all. This is not right either. Death penalties should be there and should be annoying, but you should be able to recover from them in a decent amount of time, thus being able to repeatedly try to win an especially hard fight.
I am not aware ANY game EVER attempted to have equal damage for everyone. If you have classes, different classes do different kinds of damage, such as:
- high and reliable direct damage
- very high but unreliable direct damage (critical hit based)
- slow starting but then increasing damage (damage over time)
- area damage
- etc
No game I am aware of has done this any different than that.
What HAS changed though is that damage got less drastically unequal. Tank and healer classes got buffed because its damn boring (and comes with extreme party dependence) if you can only tank or only heal and hardly do any damage as well. Again, this is a good thing and I wouldnt want to get back to the old state when tanks and healers have been painfully completely party dependent, while other classes could solo very nicely.
You have to use perspective to answer this question....
My first mmo was EQ1 in 1999. The content was majorily focused on group play. That didnt stop thousands of people from trying to solo through alot of content. Not to say I didnt group or raid, but probably 85% of the time I was soloing.
It took a long time, many deaths, and many corpse runs to hit level cap. Back then we didnt even think of level cap. We thought of having fun that day/night. Everything wasnt about leveling. Overcoming challenges at whatever level was very important.
So, put it in perspective... Today we have insta-ports. No true death penalties, leveling to cap is done in weeks, bite-size solo content, tokens, and class-balancing because devs think each class should be able to do the same damage etc.
These days I only play the less-forgiving mmo's because even though the end-game content of some of the 'easier' mmo's is the only challenge, I dont feel challenged as I level.
A challenging game is if you are constantly challenged. Meaning combat etc is hard and you have to know what you do to have success.
Having to run around for half an hour just to reach a certain area is boring, mind numbing, and no challenge whatsoever.
Death penalties need to be there, but too hard death penalties are just as bad as too trivial ones. If you play for hours and lose EVERYTHING you worked for before, just because of one single death, you will step extremely carefully through the game and never take any risks at all. This is not right either. Death penalties should be there and should be annoying, but you should be able to recover from them in a decent amount of time, thus being able to repeatedly try to win an especially hard fight.
I am not aware ANY game EVER attempted to have equal damage for everyone. If you have classes, different classes do different kinds of damage, such as:
- high and reliable direct damage
- very high but unreliable direct damage (critical hit based)
- slow starting but then increasing damage (damage over time)
- area damage
- etc
No game I am aware of has done this any different than that.
What HAS changed though is that damage got less drastically unequal. Tank and healer classes got buffed because its damn boring (and comes with extreme party dependence) if you can only tank or only heal and hardly do any damage as well. Again, this is a good thing and I wouldnt want to get back to the old state when tanks and healers have been painfully completely party dependent, while other classes could solo very nicely.
First off, I wasnt refering to what people think the perfect "difficulty" level is nowadays. You have your opinion on death penalties and quick travel, I have mine. My above post addresses the fact that I think MMO's are easier than they used to be and Ive outlined the reasons of why I think that. I do think that aside from raid content in todays AAA MMO's, the content and leveling process is easier and less challenging. If you ask the majority Im sure they would probably agree with you as opposed to me on what is better, todays or yesterdays.
Secondly, the class balance I was refering to again has to be looked at from a perspective of what used to be. When graphical mmo's first came out, a cleric, per say, was mostly a healer, and had alot of trouble soloing content, whereas a necromancer was good at soloing. The game developers made no apology for the fact that classes have roles. Nowadays, class differentiation is somewhat skewed. The talent trees or traits allow one person to switch so that they can tackle solo content. Is this a good or bad thing? Most, or the majority of people would probably side with you that todays class balancing of specific trait/talent lines is the most popular.
I would say the move towards solo based leveling is enough to say games are becoming easier. It is much harder to coordinate with real people and worth together to maximize the effectiveness of the entire group, rather than just doing it yourself. This has nothing to do with time, but with using communication, knowledge of classes, and using critical thinking to improve on your tactics when encountered with new enemies or gaining new skills in the group.
Sent me an email if you want me to mail you some pizza rolls.
Originally posted by Dewm Originally posted by Brixon Of course they are easier now, please let's not fool ourselves. If you have been playing MMO's for a long time, the change is obvious. We moved away from group centric multiplayer to single player in a multiplayer enviroment. Since most games made now allow you to solo to the max level, there is little need for getting to know the players around you. Heck most games don't even have any downtime anymore so there is hardly any friendly banter amoung the group. The social aspect of MMO's has really diminished. Your reputation doesn't mean that much anymore. What kind of community does this build? Sure MMO's shouldn't punish solo play, there is a demand for that depending on your available gaming time. But, MMO's should reward MMO play and try to build an enviroment that fosters it.
I agree 100%
I think what frusterates me most about this toppic (not just this one but others like it) alot of people say that time doesn't equal skill. I say it does (to some extent) Take guitar for instance, you want to learn guitar? just about anyone can learn, sure it takes LONGER for others then for some...but its all about the amount of time you put in, When I say learning guitar is harder then learning guitar hero, its because one takes longer to learn. take the average guy off of the street, he plays guitar hero for 3 weeks, he'll be pretty good. put him infront of a guitar for three years, he'll be pretty good.
Time DOES = skill. End of story.
Then you add in that older MMO's where more groupe centered, which meant you had to get along with other people and stratigize. I would say WITHOUT A DOUBT older MMO's where deffinitly harder.
Time does not equal skill in MMORPG. You spend more time in the game, but have you improved your skills any? No. You've made your character more powerful. Whether it takes more time or less time, anyone with basic reading comprehension and basic social skills can excel in any mmorpg.
Time does often equal skill in real life. If you spend more time playing a guitar, you will generally get better at playing a guitar. You are improving your skills, not the guitar's skills.
I do think the older MMO's were harder and more difficult. Of course it's going to take more time to kill something solo that's designed to be killed by a group. It's the same thing as soloing dungeons in WoW. It takes more time to get your character powerful enough to do it. It is harder, but again, anyone with basic reading comprehension, basic social skills and enough patience can do it.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I remember EQ1 days you'd spend TEN HOURS raiding a dungeon (uphill both ways!) just to wipe at the end and have to start from few dungeons below because of corpse run not being a possibility!
You see it in patch notes across all mmos: Elite mobs become reduced to non elite. Group content gets nerfed so it can be done solo. Raids and dungeons get adjusted as time goes by, offering passive buffs to players and debuffs to bosses. Experience gain and amounts get adjusted so that people can level up more quickly. That all adds up to mmos becoming easier in my book. Were they hard before? Maybe not hard per se, but more tedious and time consuming.
All games do this in some form or another to speed leveling for the newcomers. This is done so they can enjoy the later parts of the game more quickly and join friends in raiding etc.
Ya know, people can say what they want but early EQ was...hard. From vanilla to RoK (kunark expansion which is where I started playing) dungeons and a group environment were more difficult than a similar level dungeon in WoW. Where it get's muddy is 1) they are completely different games with completely different classes and abilities and 2) You actually had to have some degree of skill among your more important classes (puller/monk, Tank, enchanter etc). Some encounters were made easier by skillful players where other groups would continually fail time and again at even the most basic encounter in say lower guk.
Now again, this can happen in WoW as well. I'm not saying that. But step it up to say early planes raids in vanilla through kunark. Death touches, zone wide aggro and summoning mobs were BRUTAL. If your monk didn't know how to pull it, you would wipe.
Hardest times I ever had but it forced me to learn and try new things. I was a monk in EQ and I died 9 times my first fear raid when I pulled. I didn't wipe my raid though and I came away from the experience 100% better at my class from that perspective.
I'm not saying it was a bed of roses mind you. When you go LFG for 90 minutes and can't find anything...it get's fustrating. For me though, I miss that feeling in a game where skill at your chosen class matters and you built your reputation on not only how you played your class but your attitude as well. If you got blacklisted as a bad player or an asshat well, good luck getting into a decent group or guild. AA's killed most of the skill involved or required though so no way to really relive any of that.
When people make comments like that, at least for me, it is true based on what I've experienced and seen since early EQ.
I remember in vanilla WoW, how a group spent hour wiping in Deadmines (lvl 20 instance) and we didn't find anyone we could have blamed, and how I was unable to complete a quest at lvl 16 because it was too hard to solo and there was no group to be found. I remember how I died countless times because I made a mistake and pulled too many targets or got adds on me.
In WoW Cataclysm it doesn't happen to me any more. Nowadays the design philosophy is that all challenges before max level are so easy, that everyone will be able to complete them, and that there should be no surprises that could kill you. The games (before max level) have became so easy, that last MMOs that challenge me in PvE before max levels were Wizard 101's dungeons and minigames in Free Realms. Even games made for children are more challenging than leveling in your average MMO.
They kinda started easy once the first person in Ultima Online tamed their first Dragon or once kiting in EQ became well known for certain classes.
I would say once the death penalty became obsoulete...EQ and UO both had somewhat brutal (yet great) death penalties..Anarchy Online with its short term stat/skill debuff made dying meh and WoW then came with the easy way to teleport out of a dungeon/far away quest via dying.
Comments
Yeesh I give up lol
Game B designs to those expectations. Then Game B goes through the same thing - getting easier. Game B sets the new lower expectations for the Player.
Game C comes along.
It is a nasty cycle.
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
Explorer: 87%, Killer: 67%, Achiever: 27%, Socializer: 20%
We are just going to go downhill! Every game is, has, or going to.
Even without the addons, there has been the increasing demand for the games to be easier as the companies have attempted to attract the more casual player. It is companies attempting to attract and cater to the casual. Money speaks.
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
Explorer: 87%, Killer: 67%, Achiever: 27%, Socializer: 20%
No arguement from me on the timesink part. I was referring to the human interaction. Gameplay was only 10% of progression. Click on stuff, travel, click on stuff. Easy. Other people are far more complicated and random.
Kill, get treasure, repeat. pretty easy. Having to come up with a marketing campaign to get people to come to your new shop instead of their regular supplier, a little bit harder. Or just a time sink too. whatever you wanna call it. People can decide for themselves.
And people just devoted all of their entertainment time to an mmo. Still had jobs, families ect...Just didnt watch TV or go out drinking as much. Just as many powergamers in themeparks (actually more). Dont remember people dying from exhaustion in the old games. But it seems you've made up your mind.
Themepark games are easier. That was their key to success. Interacting with others is all thats different. It's more difficult, more time consuming, and unlike an npc, if your a dick, they wont interact with you.
Take away loot as rewards in a thempark and it fails instantly. 90% of the content becomes a waste. The vast majority would ask why the hell they added quests. It wasnt for the fun and good story, And judge them on the quality of their content rather than the color of loot the quest rewards. I dont think they would judge nicely either. I could be wrong, just like you could be.
Either way they're just games. If you remove people from one it fails, if you remove loot from the other it fails. What's the definition of an mmo again?
DMV... ugh! I'm okay with referring to the changes as removing things that were annoying time sinks and tedius. I'm also okay that these be referred to as making things faster.
OP asked for why people think games are getting easier. Maybe they're not easier in the most strict sense of the term. However, faster and less tedius is certainly the pattern for changes in WoW.
On a side note, there are things that are much harder than before. Healing for one is far more difficult than it used to be. It used to be nothing to heal 5 mans and have 50% mana left on a pull with a decent group. Not so any longer, at least when I played last.
Of course they are easier now, please let's not fool ourselves. If you have been playing MMO's for a long time, the change is obvious.
We moved away from group centric multiplayer to single player in a multiplayer enviroment.
Since most games made now allow you to solo to the max level, there is little need for getting to know the players around you. Heck most games don't even have any downtime anymore so there is hardly any friendly banter among the group. The social aspect of MMO's has really diminished. Your reputation doesn't mean that much anymore. What kind of community does this build?
Sure MMO's shouldn't punish solo play, there is a demand for that depending on your available gaming time. But, MMO's should reward MMO play and try to build an enviroment that fosters it.
I agree 100%
I think what frusterates me most about this toppic (not just this one but others like it) alot of people say that time doesn't equal skill. I say it does (to some extent)
Take guitar for instance, you want to learn guitar? just about anyone can learn, sure it takes LONGER for others then for some...but its all about the amount of time you put in,
When I say learning guitar is harder then learning guitar hero, its because one takes longer to learn. take the average guy off of the street, he plays guitar hero for 3 weeks, he'll be pretty good. put him infront of a guitar for three years, he'll be pretty good.
Time DOES = skill. End of story.
Then you add in that older MMO's where more groupe centered, which meant you had to get along with other people and stratigize. I would say WITHOUT A DOUBT older MMO's where deffinitly harder.
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I hear people say stuff like this about WoW as well.
but I have to ask them.
"Have you beat Ragnaros in CATA yet?"
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
That is a small part of the game.
The better question would be - compared to Vanilla WoW, can you level toons in Cata while drunk and playing with your toes?
Not everybody raids, but everybody that plays the game - plays the game.
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
Explorer: 87%, Killer: 67%, Achiever: 27%, Socializer: 20%
yeah actually...
I mean if I played through the campaign in Halo, and all of the enemies were grunts exept the last "boss" which was a brute. sure he was hard to kill...but the game is easy..
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Expo is basing his idea that games have not gotten easier based on raids. Raids are a small part of the game for many players. Many do not even raid. So I was asking him to look at the games outside of raiding...to see whether or not he would agree that they have become easier than they were...
...since generally speaking, almost everybody that has talked about the games being easier - they've not been talking about raiding in the least.
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
Explorer: 87%, Killer: 67%, Achiever: 27%, Socializer: 20%
You have to use perspective to answer this question....
My first mmo was EQ1 in 1999. The content was majorily focused on group play. That didnt stop thousands of people from trying to solo through alot of content. Not to say I didnt group or raid, but probably 85% of the time I was soloing.
It took a long time, many deaths, and many corpse runs to hit level cap. Back then we didnt even think of level cap. We thought of having fun that day/night. Everything wasnt about leveling. Overcoming challenges at whatever level was very important.
So, put it in perspective... Today we have insta-ports. No true death penalties, leveling to cap is done in weeks, bite-size solo content, tokens, and class-balancing because devs think each class should be able to do the same damage etc.
These days I only play the less-forgiving mmo's because even though the end-game content of some of the 'easier' mmo's is the only challenge, I dont feel challenged as I level.
Did someone really just say that one of the target demographics for MMOs is... retired people?
The age group that is least likely to be able to use a computer, is a more important group than the 20-40y/o working male?
Sir, if you are going to pull facts out of your ass, please make them less... silly.
Everything creates huge amounts of negativity on the internet, that's what the internet is for: Negativity, porn and lolcats.
Err what ? LOL
I cant talk about Rift, but I hear the argument that WoW is getting easier and easier from everybody, no matter what game they are playing.
I also keep hearing over and over from newbies in Vanguard statements like "whow this is challenging".
A challenging game is if you are constantly challenged. Meaning combat etc is hard and you have to know what you do to have success.
Having to run around for half an hour just to reach a certain area is boring, mind numbing, and no challenge whatsoever.
Death penalties need to be there, but too hard death penalties are just as bad as too trivial ones. If you play for hours and lose EVERYTHING you worked for before, just because of one single death, you will step extremely carefully through the game and never take any risks at all. This is not right either. Death penalties should be there and should be annoying, but you should be able to recover from them in a decent amount of time, thus being able to repeatedly try to win an especially hard fight.
I am not aware ANY game EVER attempted to have equal damage for everyone. If you have classes, different classes do different kinds of damage, such as:
- high and reliable direct damage
- very high but unreliable direct damage (critical hit based)
- slow starting but then increasing damage (damage over time)
- area damage
- etc
No game I am aware of has done this any different than that.
What HAS changed though is that damage got less drastically unequal. Tank and healer classes got buffed because its damn boring (and comes with extreme party dependence) if you can only tank or only heal and hardly do any damage as well. Again, this is a good thing and I wouldnt want to get back to the old state when tanks and healers have been painfully completely party dependent, while other classes could solo very nicely.
First off, I wasnt refering to what people think the perfect "difficulty" level is nowadays. You have your opinion on death penalties and quick travel, I have mine. My above post addresses the fact that I think MMO's are easier than they used to be and Ive outlined the reasons of why I think that. I do think that aside from raid content in todays AAA MMO's, the content and leveling process is easier and less challenging. If you ask the majority Im sure they would probably agree with you as opposed to me on what is better, todays or yesterdays.
Secondly, the class balance I was refering to again has to be looked at from a perspective of what used to be. When graphical mmo's first came out, a cleric, per say, was mostly a healer, and had alot of trouble soloing content, whereas a necromancer was good at soloing. The game developers made no apology for the fact that classes have roles. Nowadays, class differentiation is somewhat skewed. The talent trees or traits allow one person to switch so that they can tackle solo content. Is this a good or bad thing? Most, or the majority of people would probably side with you that todays class balancing of specific trait/talent lines is the most popular.
I would say the move towards solo based leveling is enough to say games are becoming easier. It is much harder to coordinate with real people and worth together to maximize the effectiveness of the entire group, rather than just doing it yourself. This has nothing to do with time, but with using communication, knowledge of classes, and using critical thinking to improve on your tactics when encountered with new enemies or gaining new skills in the group.
Sent me an email if you want me to mail you some pizza rolls.
I think what frusterates me most about this toppic (not just this one but others like it) alot of people say that time doesn't equal skill. I say it does (to some extent)
Take guitar for instance, you want to learn guitar? just about anyone can learn, sure it takes LONGER for others then for some...but its all about the amount of time you put in,
When I say learning guitar is harder then learning guitar hero, its because one takes longer to learn. take the average guy off of the street, he plays guitar hero for 3 weeks, he'll be pretty good. put him infront of a guitar for three years, he'll be pretty good.
Time DOES = skill. End of story.
Then you add in that older MMO's where more groupe centered, which meant you had to get along with other people and stratigize. I would say WITHOUT A DOUBT older MMO's where deffinitly harder.
Time does not equal skill in MMORPG. You spend more time in the game, but have you improved your skills any? No. You've made your character more powerful. Whether it takes more time or less time, anyone with basic reading comprehension and basic social skills can excel in any mmorpg.
Time does often equal skill in real life. If you spend more time playing a guitar, you will generally get better at playing a guitar. You are improving your skills, not the guitar's skills.
I do think the older MMO's were harder and more difficult. Of course it's going to take more time to kill something solo that's designed to be killed by a group. It's the same thing as soloing dungeons in WoW. It takes more time to get your character powerful enough to do it. It is harder, but again, anyone with basic reading comprehension, basic social skills and enough patience can do it.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Bah! GET OFF MY LAWN!!!
I remember EQ1 days you'd spend TEN HOURS raiding a dungeon (uphill both ways!) just to wipe at the end and have to start from few dungeons below because of corpse run not being a possibility!
You must be new to ask this kind of question. And yes Wow is the hardest mmo everyone knows it...
All games do this in some form or another to speed leveling for the newcomers. This is done so they can enjoy the later parts of the game more quickly and join friends in raiding etc.
Ya know, people can say what they want but early EQ was...hard. From vanilla to RoK (kunark expansion which is where I started playing) dungeons and a group environment were more difficult than a similar level dungeon in WoW. Where it get's muddy is 1) they are completely different games with completely different classes and abilities and 2) You actually had to have some degree of skill among your more important classes (puller/monk, Tank, enchanter etc). Some encounters were made easier by skillful players where other groups would continually fail time and again at even the most basic encounter in say lower guk.
Now again, this can happen in WoW as well. I'm not saying that. But step it up to say early planes raids in vanilla through kunark. Death touches, zone wide aggro and summoning mobs were BRUTAL. If your monk didn't know how to pull it, you would wipe.
Hardest times I ever had but it forced me to learn and try new things. I was a monk in EQ and I died 9 times my first fear raid when I pulled. I didn't wipe my raid though and I came away from the experience 100% better at my class from that perspective.
I'm not saying it was a bed of roses mind you. When you go LFG for 90 minutes and can't find anything...it get's fustrating. For me though, I miss that feeling in a game where skill at your chosen class matters and you built your reputation on not only how you played your class but your attitude as well. If you got blacklisted as a bad player or an asshat well, good luck getting into a decent group or guild. AA's killed most of the skill involved or required though so no way to really relive any of that.
When people make comments like that, at least for me, it is true based on what I've experienced and seen since early EQ.
I remember in vanilla WoW, how a group spent hour wiping in Deadmines (lvl 20 instance) and we didn't find anyone we could have blamed, and how I was unable to complete a quest at lvl 16 because it was too hard to solo and there was no group to be found. I remember how I died countless times because I made a mistake and pulled too many targets or got adds on me.
In WoW Cataclysm it doesn't happen to me any more. Nowadays the design philosophy is that all challenges before max level are so easy, that everyone will be able to complete them, and that there should be no surprises that could kill you. The games (before max level) have became so easy, that last MMOs that challenge me in PvE before max levels were Wizard 101's dungeons and minigames in Free Realms. Even games made for children are more challenging than leveling in your average MMO.
They kinda started easy once the first person in Ultima Online tamed their first Dragon or once kiting in EQ became well known for certain classes.
I would say once the death penalty became obsoulete...EQ and UO both had somewhat brutal (yet great) death penalties..Anarchy Online with its short term stat/skill debuff made dying meh and WoW then came with the easy way to teleport out of a dungeon/far away quest via dying.
Lack of punishment for death =/= easy gameplay
ALSO:
Quest trackers
Sparkly items to make it easy to find them
Websites with cheatsheets
Player Mods