It could be more challenging in the older mmorpgs. That doesn't say easier/harder. Just more challenging. Whether that's a good, or a bad thing. In terms of a tedious hell level, it would be a bad thing. In terms of say having every class to be in their toes to handle a tricky camp, while having to mana manage, and every class play their roles correctly, then that was probably a good thing.
Oh secondly. The other aspect being talked about is seemingly 'legwork', and whether that made a better game or not. In some ways it was, in some other ways it wasn't.
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.
Doubled quest XP in the middle Burning Crusade. Easier because leveling got faster.
Added a dual spec system so changing specs back and forth is no longer needed.
Removed pet loyalty system making it easier for hunters to train pets.
Removed pets being tamed at their initial level replacing it with pet jumping level, making it easier to train pets.
Removed ammunition and ammunition bags, making it easier for classes who use ranged weapons to keep space open in inventory.
Removed questing for epic mounts for Warlocks and Paladins, making it easier to get the mounts.
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.
Changed channeled heal for hunters to instant cast making it easier for hunters to keep pets healed.
Converted some of the Vanilla dungeons to shorter runs making it easier and faster to do a full run.
Added crafted BOE epics so non-raiders could have easier access to high quality gear sold on AH.
Added a cross-server dungeon finder system making it easier to find groups for dungeon runs.
Added dungeon rewards for running randoms.
Removed elite mobs from dungeon entrances.
Reworked the quest system providing easy access to location information needed to complete quests.
Reworked leveling in Cata so level cap can be achieved in significantly less time than the 240 hours which was common during BC.
Added Death Knight as hero class allowing players with high level characters to completely skip the first 58 levels.
This is just from memory. There are probably some I missed.
With few exceptions, these are ways the game has become faster -- but not necessarily easier.
DIFFICULTY REDUCTION: Hunters not needing to channel to heal pets directly increases the damage of hunters (they can DPS instead of channel), which makes things easier.
NOT DIFFICULTY REDUCTION: Dungeon finder doesn't make dungeons any easier, it just makes getting into dungeons faster/more convient. (Although the rewards for dungeon finder increase character power, which makes things easier.)
So the answer to the OP's question is that players often mistake time or convenience for difficulty.
Doubling level XP doesn't make a game harder, it only makes it more grindy.
Removing mounts doesn't make a game harder, it only makes it less convenient.
But things like improving monster HP or cast time do make a game harder, because the skill required to successfully beat monsters increases.
And of course there's a sub-discussion of fun challenge vs. un-fun challenge. If walking forward is no longer "hold W" but "press a complex series of buttons to keep walking", that's not a particularly interesting complexity -- so it's less fun, even though it's more challenging.
But by this logic you could remove everything in the game, you start at level 80 with epic gear and you have to beat deathwing. I mean really its all just a grind to get to that point right? every little quest, every trade, every moment in WoW is so you can get better and better? so isn't the first 79 levels just a grind?
In MMO's and all video games, (exept maybe puzzle games) difficulty is measured in time. whether you like it or not.
So taking out time related aspects of a game is making it "easier".
If halo took out the first 2 levels, it would be "easier"..now I know and you know we both could beat those first two levels...so its more of just a grind......right? why not take them out?
P.S. and now that I thinka bout it puzzle games are measured in time also. If a puzzle game takes me 20 seconds to figure out its easy, if another puzzle takes me 2 hours to figure out its hard...
P.S. and now that I thinka bout it puzzle games are measured in time also. If a puzzle game takes me 20 seconds to figure out its easy, if another puzzle takes me 2 hours to figure out its hard...
time = difficulty in any game.
Okay, while you're jogging across Kalimdor, you can tell your friends how incredibly skillfully you're jogging. I'm very sure that they'll be very impressed.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
P.S. and now that I thinka bout it puzzle games are measured in time also. If a puzzle game takes me 20 seconds to figure out its easy, if another puzzle takes me 2 hours to figure out its hard...
time = difficulty in any game.
Okay, while you're jogging across Kalimdor, you can tell your friends how incredibly skillfully you're jogging. I'm very sure that they'll be very impressed.
Ah, but if you make sure you are grouping your quests correctly to minimize your travel time, grouping up with a "speeder" character to speed your journey, making sure you minimize damage to your gear so you don't have to return to home base to get it repaired (which would waste time) and you can see the "skill" that is required to maximize your efficiency in playing.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
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P.S. and now that I thinka bout it puzzle games are measured in time also. If a puzzle game takes me 20 seconds to figure out its easy, if another puzzle takes me 2 hours to figure out its hard...
time = difficulty in any game.
It depends a little on how you're using the words 'hard' and 'easy'. For instance, if it takes you 20 seconds to figure out how to solve a puzzle, but implementing the solution means pressing the same button over and over for 20 minutes, is that hard? It's certainly not challenging. What if it takes you 20 minutes to figure the puzzle out, and implementing the solution takes one correct button press? Is that hard? It sounds challenging.
You're spending the same amount of time, but one is challenging and one is not.
The goal of newer mmorpg is to remove the needless button pressing of the first example. Which is good. I think they are also shortening the 20 minutes to solve time of the second example as well though, which might be good...but only to a point.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
P.S. and now that I thinka bout it puzzle games are measured in time also. If a puzzle game takes me 20 seconds to figure out its easy, if another puzzle takes me 2 hours to figure out its hard...
time = difficulty in any game.
Okay, while you're jogging across Kalimdor, you can tell your friends how incredibly skillfully you're jogging. I'm very sure that they'll be very impressed.
Ah, but if you make sure you are grouping your quests correctly to minimize your travel time, grouping up with a "speeder" character to speed your journey, making sure you minimize damage to your gear so you don't have to return to home base to get it repaired (which would waste time) and you can see the "skill" that is required to maximize your efficiency in playing.
Modern MMO's don't require this.
I have difficulaty speaking the same language with anyone who stretches his definitions until they're big enough to fit an argument.
Jogging, from A to B. Difficult? A skill that you need to practice to get better at?
I'm simply tring to dismiss an overly simplistic argument that time = difficulty, when we all know that there are a variety of situations where time is simply wasted in the (dev's interest) of game pacing (often called "time sink").
The two terms are not synonyms, even when you can show examples where they are closely related, there are also examples where they are not.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Originally posted by Kyleran Originally posted by Icewhite
Originally posted by Dewm
P.S. and now that I thinka bout it puzzle games are measured in time also. If a puzzle game takes me 20 seconds to figure out its easy, if another puzzle takes me 2 hours to figure out its hard... time = difficulty in any game.
Okay, while you're jogging across Kalimdor, you can tell your friends how incredibly skillfully you're jogging. I'm very sure that they'll be very impressed. Ah, but if you make sure you are grouping your quests correctly to minimize your travel time, grouping up with a "speeder" character to speed your journey, making sure you minimize damage to your gear so you don't have to return to home base to get it repaired (which would waste time) and you can see the "skill" that is required to maximize your efficiency in playing. Modern MMO's don't require this.
Older mmorpg didn't require this either. You can do this in older and newer mmorpg.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
MMORPG's are easier today, but they are also more challenging and enjoyable at the same time. So why are they easier? The answer is simple: two critical changes in how the game is set up.
1. Death penalty: without a death penalty MMORPG's became instantly infinitely easier. Statistically speaking, poorer players or less-organized raid groups die more, meaning that it will be much harder for mediocre players to hit cap than better players (or players in well-organized guilds). Today, dying only serves as an encounter-ender and does little to halt the progress of a party's progress. Losing experience and having to retrieve your body after wipes really made older MMO's difficult.
2. Respawn rates in dungeons/instances: When is the last MMORPG game you can think of where the mobs respawn behind you as you proceed through a dungeon crawl? Better yet, do dungeon crawls even exist anymore? Wiping in today games just comes with the inconvenience of running back to your "save point" (where your party wiped) with no obstacles to fight back through. But in the old games, if you wiped you might either have to start at the beginning of the dungeon all over again or otherwise figure out how to get back to your corpses before the mobs respawned. Making it to the final boss was not just a matter of time like it is now. It was a matter of time AND skill.
It could be argued that bosses were easier to kill in older MMORPG's because the combat was simplified. But again, if you wiped you might have only had one attempt at it. In games like RIFT you can keep trying over and over and over again until your party eventually figures it out, or gets lucky, or until your party loses patience.
Dificulty in most games is based on the ammount of practice or inate ability needed to overcome a goal.
Inate ability lowers the amount of practice needed, while it might come to time, it will mostly come to your threshold of augmenting the skill you have in the game.
Some games lower this threshold by limiting the amount of pratice/inate ability needed, when it comes to that point you stop actually trying to achieve and just do.
Some people would say that pratice equals time, but that takes out of the equation the inate ability of the player.
The developers have 2 choices:
a. Use the same type of gameplay of others game, in this case people have developed alot of pratice with others games
(see shooters or platform games, the gameplay is mostly similar, if you got good at one you'll be ok at all, you might not excel depending on the treshold the developers put on it)
b. Use new type of gameplay, since it's new for everyone the threshold can be re-arranged to find a level of dificulty that suits what the developers are looking for.
Most mmos are on situation A, so they feel easy, the learning curve is way lower and the inate skill will still matter on the excelling part, but not in the "getting to be good" part.
The only ways people will get the rush of feeling a game is really dificult is either for the developers to set a REALLY high treshold (demon's soul, ultima underworld) or by making a brand new gameplay style, which will be dificult up to the time where people learn it.
2. Respawn rates in dungeons/instances: When is the last MMORPG game you can think of where the mobs respawn behind you as you proceed through a dungeon crawl?
Hmm, that's a good question. Last time I remember getting spawns "right on top of you" was early on in CoH, I think. 2004-ish.
In some of the longer raids, it does still happen, but isn't common. You have to wipe a lot to see it.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Originally posted by Icewhite Originally posted by Ozivois2. Respawn rates in dungeons/instances: When is the last MMORPG game you can think of where the mobs respawn behind you as you proceed through a dungeon crawl?
Hmm, that's a good question. Last time I remember getting spawns "right on top of you" was early on in CoH, I think. In some of the longer raids, it does still happen, but isn't common. You have to wipe a lot to see it.
I would consider this a lame game mechanic. If I kill something, it should be dead. If more challenge is needed, the mob should have been harder to kill the first time, or a new mob should be hidden nearby, waiting for everyone to look away before attacking.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
So with the current consensus, easier and less time consuming are not the same thing. I agree, based on the position that easy is the opposite of difficult.
In application of MMORPGs, what does one call a game that changes mechanics so it requires less work to achieve the same reward? Faster, less tedius, less labor intensive? If so, I'm okay with that also.
Would that mean if I run a game and it used to take 5,000 kills to hit level cap and I change that to 500,000 kills, that I didn't make the game harder, just more grindy? If so, I'm okay with that too.
So assuming I'm not totally off the mark with this (and I could easily be), in response to the OP... easier isn't the right word, but games did change. They are faster, less tedius and less labor intensive than they used to be. Not easier, just less work.
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.
Sometimes they're right. Whenever they make points regarding quick travel or having to wait 12 hours for a signature mob, they're definitely NOT right.
If they say that 1-60 WoW is now easier than it was during the vanilla days, they have a point. It was done on purpose to get people up to expac level as quickly as possible. They want people to be able to rip through mobs and XP like nobody's business to get you there faster. If you can take on 3-4 mobs in Elwynn forest when in Vanilla you were sweating it at 2, sure, there's an argument to be made.
I remember when I played vanilla with my hunter, I'd have to spend time setting up my shot and getting my pet ready for one mob. To contrast, with Catacalysm, I just set my pet full aggro, and just started shooting behind him as he'd just rip through mob after mob after mob.
It was still fun, but more about the stories and quests than about the challenge.
I preferred LotRO's method for RoI. They just gave you a trinket that gave an XP bonus; done deal. Same basic level of challenge as before, you just advance a bit quicker.
P.S. and now that I thinka bout it puzzle games are measured in time also. If a puzzle game takes me 20 seconds to figure out its easy, if another puzzle takes me 2 hours to figure out its hard...
time = difficulty in any game.
It depends a little on how you're using the words 'hard' and 'easy'. For instance, if it takes you 20 seconds to figure out how to solve a puzzle, but implementing the solution means pressing the same button over and over for 20 minutes, is that hard? It's certainly not challenging. What if it takes you 20 minutes to figure the puzzle out, and implementing the solution takes one correct button press? Is that hard? It sounds challenging.
You're spending the same amount of time, but one is challenging and one is not.
The goal of newer mmorpg is to remove the needless button pressing of the first example. Which is good. I think they are also shortening the 20 minutes to solve time of the second example as well though, which might be good...but only to a point.
Well in defence of my analogy, if you are hitting the same button for 20 minutes its hardly a puzzle game.
But so far everyone that has taken my example has taken it out of context, I was using the analogy in refrence to the post I quoted. He was saying that time does not equal difficulty, And I was saying it does.
another analogy:
In real life you can hike 20 miles, what makes a 20 mile hike DIFFICULT?...the fact that it will take you 8-12hrs.
If you hop in a car and drive 20 miles on a freeway its EASY..doesn't require anything.
Originally posted by Dewm Originally posted by lizardbones
Originally posted by Dewm
P.S. and now that I thinka bout it puzzle games are measured in time also. If a puzzle game takes me 20 seconds to figure out its easy, if another puzzle takes me 2 hours to figure out its hard...
time = difficulty in any game.
It depends a little on how you're using the words 'hard' and 'easy'. For instance, if it takes you 20 seconds to figure out how to solve a puzzle, but implementing the solution means pressing the same button over and over for 20 minutes, is that hard? It's certainly not challenging. What if it takes you 20 minutes to figure the puzzle out, and implementing the solution takes one correct button press? Is that hard? It sounds challenging.
You're spending the same amount of time, but one is challenging and one is not.
The goal of newer mmorpg is to remove the needless button pressing of the first example. Which is good. I think they are also shortening the 20 minutes to solve time of the second example as well though, which might be good...but only to a point.
Well in defence of my analogy, if you are hitting the same button for 20 minutes its hardly a puzzle game.
But so far everyone that has taken my example has taken it out of context, I was using the analogy in refrence to the post I quoted. He was saying that time does not equal difficulty, And I was saying it does.
another analogy: In real life you can hike 20 miles, what makes a 20 mile hike DIFFICULT?...the fact that it will take you 8-12hrs. If you hop in a car and drive 20 miles on a freeway its EASY..doesn't require anything.
time = difficulty
I get your point, and it's a valid point. The longer it takes to do something, the harder it is and the more effort it takes to do it. In regards to mmorpg specifically though, it doesn't always equal skill because a lot of that time spent is arbitrary 'button pushing'.
I'll use WoW as an example because that's what I'm playing right now. You can either run from Orgrimar to Thunder Bluff, or you can take the airship to Thunder Bluff. Both accomplish the same thing (getting to TB), but one takes 20 minutes and the other takes 5. Running there takes more effort, but doesn't take more skill. By the time you can run to TB, you're as good as you're going to get at running in WoW.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
The problem with this thread is the use of the word EASIER. Making a game faster is making it easier from one aspect. Come up with a better concept of what is really being sought in the discussion.
Well do people seek time-consumption and inconvenience or do they seek challenge?
Seems easy to assume they want challenge. Only a trivial amount of people really care about time-consumption and inconvenience -- especially considering that all but the worst of MMORPGs have enough time consumption to keep players occupied.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
1. needing much effort or skill to accomplish, deal with, or understand.
2. characterized by or causing hardships or problems.
1. Needing much EFFORT OR skill to accomplish, deal with, or understand.
Time/effort
OR
skill
to accomplish....
......seems pretty straight forward to me.
Ina certain way...
Early MMOs were about Skill...
Newer MMOs are about Effort...
To the OP...
The claim that current MMO's got easy is mainly comming from people like me that played the early MMOs.
Because we are in a position to compare between how it was and how it is, and many of us just find that current MMOs are easier compared to early MMOs.
There is a reasoning behind this and let me give some examples.
In the early MMO, Ultima Online, combat was not an easy affair. There was no Skill bar to place abilities and potions on, there was no macros, there was no addons like you have in WoW to change the UI to your comfort. There was no Tabed selection either.
Combat was semi twitch too, since you had to quickly identify your target pull up their Health bar, have your abilities positioned in your screen in easy to access positions, have your backpack opened your potions easelly clickable arranged in it, have bandages as well, and not too many because if you died, you lost all your items armors etc on yourself, and had to go find or make new armor new potions and bandages in order to join combat again.
You had itemized reagents that were used to cast magical spells, no reagents no spells, that too you havd to get after death.
So it required much more preparation than in a game such as wow, where you lose nothing when you die everything is as you left it where you left it on your body and your back packs and spell bar.
Then UO was a game that did not employ a Level based System of Character Progression, it had a Character Skills based progression, you could choose a set of skills that you had to raise through actions, (such as raising weapon skill in wow by killing mobs).
Skill determined the Hit rate success of your Character, so a Character with 50 swords would miss more than a Character with 100 swords. However, this had no bearing on Damage.
When a swing landed it did same gamage whether it came from a character with 50 swords or one with 100 in swords.
Added to all that, the fact that the progression was not level based had another effect. All character independently of skill levels had the same amount of health (there was some little variation based on stats but not significant).
Additionally creativity and immagination of the player are definite bonuses that can give an edge.
So combine all that together now.
You are a new player just joined 5 days ago, you could actually attack and kill a player that has been playing for a year.
Provided you were more skillfull in terms of twitch and you had quickly understood the UI.
Also, what you call instances, and Instanced Raids did not exist, there were Dungeons with many levels but these were Open to anyone.
You go in with your party, you will meet other parties Killing mobs there. It was not your own version of the Dungeon just for you and your party. Combine that now with Open Free for all PvP, and the concept of Good vs Evil (you could actually choose to be a Good or an Evil Character)
And there you are negotiating Agro and Killing monsters in a Dungeon, for the last hour and a half, you are on Level 3 of the Dungeon approaching Bosses, manage to kill the Boss get the loot, and a party of Baddies (another party of players) surprises you from behind and kills all your party and takes all the loot and goodies plus ll your bellongings weapons jewels etc from your bodies.
You resurect naked.
Added to all of that, UO was a living breathing World, what you said and did to other people had consequences within that world. You could not go around bad mouthing people because quickly they would Slap you in the face and make your life mizerable. So some Social skills were also required too in order to be able to exist and prosper in that game, as well as accountability.
In comparison,
in a newer game such as WoW, you lose nothing when you die, you have your own version of Dungeons no one can attack you while you are killing a boss, there is no real concept of Good vs Evil (NPCs represent Evil) as both Horde and Alliance are good guys just do not like eachother all the time. it is LEvel BAsed, so you are guaranteed success automatically against newer characters of lower level. Your stats are boosted artificially by both levels and Gear so even when all characters are equal level there are differences in gear.
You can Tab select a target and only have to press a few buttons after that really and move your mouse (I will be fair and say that some classes had some twitch elements, Rogues and Hunters mainly).
You can use macros and addons to make things even easier.
No social skills required, and there is no accountability whatsoever, it is not a living breathing world..it is just a game.
My grandmother can be successfull in a game such as WoW if I were to give her an Epic Character. The game insures automatically her success because she does not have to apply any skill, most of it is taken care by the game. Tab select press abilities, sucees guaranteed by level and Gear.
And last but not least, newer MMOs removed the skill factor from the equation and replaced that with effort. It is no longer a question of who has more twitch skill, it is only a question of who has a dumber mind (or naive mind if you prefer not to be harsh) and is willing to play in a repetitious way in order to progress a virtual character.
Those who are successfull today need no immagination no creativity, just the capacity to run on a hamster wheel 1000 times.
In conclusion,
yes, new MMOs have gotten and are very very very easier in comparison.
But you cannot know that if you have not experienced it, you have no point of reference to make a comparison, all you know is Easy and beyond..you have not experienced hard...so your own frame of evaluation takes that "easy" and establishes a new scale of what is considered Easier and harder within it.
Yet to old farts like us, all of it is Easy because we function within a different scale of difficulty.
Question of perception based on Experience.
Now,
The real question here is whether the fact that MMOs got easier or not is a good or bad thing in and of itself. I do not think that when a game is easier this is necessarilly a bad thing personally.
I did have fun in WoW for a time, I really enjoyed its PvP and have many fond memories of it that I will always Cherish, I started having less fun when they started segregagting PvP and PvE gear however and that is the main reason I left.
I could not enjoy all of the game's facets in my own terms, and the game was forcing me to engage in repetitive activities which I did not enjoy if I wanted to break of PvP and explore another facet of the game for a while. And that is when I said, "Screw you Blizz" and left for good.
But the fact that MMOs have gotten easier is not really an issue, what is an issue is the focus on mindless repetitive gameplay that we refer to as Effort.
Repeating an instance for 50 times over and over in order to have a chance to get an item that will give me access to the next level of content to me is not something Fun at all.
I prefered the game when PvP gear and PvE gear were almost the same (and it would be better if it was the same), this way whether you are a PvPer or a PvEer mainly you can still participate in all areas of the game without having to go through repetition of something that you are just curious about and do not enjoy doing on a daily basis.
But someone thought to cpitalise on our curiosity too, lets make everyone having to go through all the steps from the begining that way they pay us a sub longer they may have thought.
Guess what..you can keep the game to yourself.
Cheers!
- Duke Suraknar - Order of the Silver Star, OSS
ESKA, Playing MMORPG's since Ultima Online 1997 - Order of the Silver Serpent, Atlantic Shard
Newer mmorpg are easier compared to old school mmorpg. However, the challenge is creeping back in, while the streamlined nature and usability are sticking around.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Can't speak to skill in UO or EQ1, but certainly every other one of the 8-10 early MMORPGs I played didn't involve more skill or better gameplay than WOW provided, Surakar.
And by all accounts I've heard, EQ1 only involved more tedium and hassles, rather than more skill.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
A bunch of bittervets saw that in the newer generation of games you could level to cap in a few weeks, not deal with insane death penalties, and spend less than two hours a day and still get something accomplished. They put their collective neckbeards together and decided that the MMO genre was getting easier and being dumbed down.
Meanwhile in WoW, an explorer was sent on behalf of the bittervet neckbeards to examine and analyze the games that were killing their beloved genre. For weeks the heroic explorer attempted to get into hardmode progression raiding, but the concept of "stay out of the fire" was too difficult to grasp. Upon leaving the game, he proclaimed for all to hear that these new games are easy mode and for casual scrubs.
Comments
It could be more challenging in the older mmorpgs. That doesn't say easier/harder. Just more challenging. Whether that's a good, or a bad thing. In terms of a tedious hell level, it would be a bad thing. In terms of say having every class to be in their toes to handle a tricky camp, while having to mana manage, and every class play their roles correctly, then that was probably a good thing.
Oh secondly. The other aspect being talked about is seemingly 'legwork', and whether that made a better game or not. In some ways it was, in some other ways it wasn't.
And there we go a balanced view.
But by this logic you could remove everything in the game, you start at level 80 with epic gear and you have to beat deathwing. I mean really its all just a grind to get to that point right? every little quest, every trade, every moment in WoW is so you can get better and better? so isn't the first 79 levels just a grind?
In MMO's and all video games, (exept maybe puzzle games) difficulty is measured in time. whether you like it or not.
So taking out time related aspects of a game is making it "easier".
If halo took out the first 2 levels, it would be "easier"..now I know and you know we both could beat those first two levels...so its more of just a grind......right? why not take them out?
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P.S. and now that I thinka bout it puzzle games are measured in time also. If a puzzle game takes me 20 seconds to figure out its easy, if another puzzle takes me 2 hours to figure out its hard...
time = difficulty in any game.
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Okay, while you're jogging across Kalimdor, you can tell your friends how incredibly skillfully you're jogging. I'm very sure that they'll be very impressed.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Ah, but if you make sure you are grouping your quests correctly to minimize your travel time, grouping up with a "speeder" character to speed your journey, making sure you minimize damage to your gear so you don't have to return to home base to get it repaired (which would waste time) and you can see the "skill" that is required to maximize your efficiency in playing.
Modern MMO's don't require this.
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Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
It depends a little on how you're using the words 'hard' and 'easy'. For instance, if it takes you 20 seconds to figure out how to solve a puzzle, but implementing the solution means pressing the same button over and over for 20 minutes, is that hard? It's certainly not challenging. What if it takes you 20 minutes to figure the puzzle out, and implementing the solution takes one correct button press? Is that hard? It sounds challenging.
You're spending the same amount of time, but one is challenging and one is not.
The goal of newer mmorpg is to remove the needless button pressing of the first example. Which is good. I think they are also shortening the 20 minutes to solve time of the second example as well though, which might be good...but only to a point.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I have difficulaty speaking the same language with anyone who stretches his definitions until they're big enough to fit an argument.
Jogging, from A to B. Difficult? A skill that you need to practice to get better at?
I'm simply tring to dismiss an overly simplistic argument that time = difficulty, when we all know that there are a variety of situations where time is simply wasted in the (dev's interest) of game pacing (often called "time sink").
The two terms are not synonyms, even when you can show examples where they are closely related, there are also examples where they are not.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Ah, but if you make sure you are grouping your quests correctly to minimize your travel time, grouping up with a "speeder" character to speed your journey, making sure you minimize damage to your gear so you don't have to return to home base to get it repaired (which would waste time) and you can see the "skill" that is required to maximize your efficiency in playing.
Modern MMO's don't require this.
Older mmorpg didn't require this either. You can do this in older and newer mmorpg.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
MMORPG's are easier today, but they are also more challenging and enjoyable at the same time. So why are they easier? The answer is simple: two critical changes in how the game is set up.
1. Death penalty: without a death penalty MMORPG's became instantly infinitely easier. Statistically speaking, poorer players or less-organized raid groups die more, meaning that it will be much harder for mediocre players to hit cap than better players (or players in well-organized guilds). Today, dying only serves as an encounter-ender and does little to halt the progress of a party's progress. Losing experience and having to retrieve your body after wipes really made older MMO's difficult.
2. Respawn rates in dungeons/instances: When is the last MMORPG game you can think of where the mobs respawn behind you as you proceed through a dungeon crawl? Better yet, do dungeon crawls even exist anymore? Wiping in today games just comes with the inconvenience of running back to your "save point" (where your party wiped) with no obstacles to fight back through. But in the old games, if you wiped you might either have to start at the beginning of the dungeon all over again or otherwise figure out how to get back to your corpses before the mobs respawned. Making it to the final boss was not just a matter of time like it is now. It was a matter of time AND skill.
It could be argued that bosses were easier to kill in older MMORPG's because the combat was simplified. But again, if you wiped you might have only had one attempt at it. In games like RIFT you can keep trying over and over and over again until your party eventually figures it out, or gets lucky, or until your party loses patience.
Dificulty in most games is based on the ammount of practice or inate ability needed to overcome a goal.
Inate ability lowers the amount of practice needed, while it might come to time, it will mostly come to your threshold of augmenting the skill you have in the game.
Some games lower this threshold by limiting the amount of pratice/inate ability needed, when it comes to that point you stop actually trying to achieve and just do.
Some people would say that pratice equals time, but that takes out of the equation the inate ability of the player.
The developers have 2 choices:
a. Use the same type of gameplay of others game, in this case people have developed alot of pratice with others games
(see shooters or platform games, the gameplay is mostly similar, if you got good at one you'll be ok at all, you might not excel depending on the treshold the developers put on it)
b. Use new type of gameplay, since it's new for everyone the threshold can be re-arranged to find a level of dificulty that suits what the developers are looking for.
Most mmos are on situation A, so they feel easy, the learning curve is way lower and the inate skill will still matter on the excelling part, but not in the "getting to be good" part.
The only ways people will get the rush of feeling a game is really dificult is either for the developers to set a REALLY high treshold (demon's soul, ultima underworld) or by making a brand new gameplay style, which will be dificult up to the time where people learn it.
Hmm, that's a good question. Last time I remember getting spawns "right on top of you" was early on in CoH, I think. 2004-ish.
In some of the longer raids, it does still happen, but isn't common. You have to wipe a lot to see it.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
In some of the longer raids, it does still happen, but isn't common. You have to wipe a lot to see it.
I would consider this a lame game mechanic. If I kill something, it should be dead. If more challenge is needed, the mob should have been harder to kill the first time, or a new mob should be hidden nearby, waiting for everyone to look away before attacking.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
So with the current consensus, easier and less time consuming are not the same thing. I agree, based on the position that easy is the opposite of difficult.
In application of MMORPGs, what does one call a game that changes mechanics so it requires less work to achieve the same reward? Faster, less tedius, less labor intensive? If so, I'm okay with that also.
Would that mean if I run a game and it used to take 5,000 kills to hit level cap and I change that to 500,000 kills, that I didn't make the game harder, just more grindy? If so, I'm okay with that too.
So assuming I'm not totally off the mark with this (and I could easily be), in response to the OP... easier isn't the right word, but games did change. They are faster, less tedius and less labor intensive than they used to be. Not easier, just less work.
Sometimes they're right. Whenever they make points regarding quick travel or having to wait 12 hours for a signature mob, they're definitely NOT right.
If they say that 1-60 WoW is now easier than it was during the vanilla days, they have a point. It was done on purpose to get people up to expac level as quickly as possible. They want people to be able to rip through mobs and XP like nobody's business to get you there faster. If you can take on 3-4 mobs in Elwynn forest when in Vanilla you were sweating it at 2, sure, there's an argument to be made.
I remember when I played vanilla with my hunter, I'd have to spend time setting up my shot and getting my pet ready for one mob. To contrast, with Catacalysm, I just set my pet full aggro, and just started shooting behind him as he'd just rip through mob after mob after mob.
It was still fun, but more about the stories and quests than about the challenge.
I preferred LotRO's method for RoI. They just gave you a trinket that gave an XP bonus; done deal. Same basic level of challenge as before, you just advance a bit quicker.
Well in defence of my analogy, if you are hitting the same button for 20 minutes its hardly a puzzle game.
But so far everyone that has taken my example has taken it out of context, I was using the analogy in refrence to the post I quoted. He was saying that time does not equal difficulty, And I was saying it does.
another analogy:
In real life you can hike 20 miles, what makes a 20 mile hike DIFFICULT?...the fact that it will take you 8-12hrs.
If you hop in a car and drive 20 miles on a freeway its EASY..doesn't require anything.
time = difficulty
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Taken off of a web dictionary:
Difficult:
1. needing much effort or skill to accomplish, deal with, or understand.
2. characterized by or causing hardships or problems.
1. Needing much EFFORT OR skill to accomplish, deal with, or understand.
Time/effort
OR
skill
to accomplish....
......seems pretty straight forward to me.
Please check out my channel. I do gaming reviews, gaming related reviews & lets plays. Thanks!
https://www.youtube.com/user/BettyofDewm/videos
IF we could control NPC's and order them to a place on the map, then /follow. It could be difficult and easy.
Its creative thinking like this that the devs lack.
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It depends a little on how you're using the words 'hard' and 'easy'. For instance, if it takes you 20 seconds to figure out how to solve a puzzle, but implementing the solution means pressing the same button over and over for 20 minutes, is that hard? It's certainly not challenging. What if it takes you 20 minutes to figure the puzzle out, and implementing the solution takes one correct button press? Is that hard? It sounds challenging.
You're spending the same amount of time, but one is challenging and one is not.
The goal of newer mmorpg is to remove the needless button pressing of the first example. Which is good. I think they are also shortening the 20 minutes to solve time of the second example as well though, which might be good...but only to a point.
Well in defence of my analogy, if you are hitting the same button for 20 minutes its hardly a puzzle game.
But so far everyone that has taken my example has taken it out of context, I was using the analogy in refrence to the post I quoted. He was saying that time does not equal difficulty, And I was saying it does.
another analogy:
In real life you can hike 20 miles, what makes a 20 mile hike DIFFICULT?...the fact that it will take you 8-12hrs.
If you hop in a car and drive 20 miles on a freeway its EASY..doesn't require anything.
time = difficulty
I get your point, and it's a valid point. The longer it takes to do something, the harder it is and the more effort it takes to do it. In regards to mmorpg specifically though, it doesn't always equal skill because a lot of that time spent is arbitrary 'button pushing'.
I'll use WoW as an example because that's what I'm playing right now. You can either run from Orgrimar to Thunder Bluff, or you can take the airship to Thunder Bluff. Both accomplish the same thing (getting to TB), but one takes 20 minutes and the other takes 5. Running there takes more effort, but doesn't take more skill. By the time you can run to TB, you're as good as you're going to get at running in WoW.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Well do people seek time-consumption and inconvenience or do they seek challenge?
Seems easy to assume they want challenge. Only a trivial amount of people really care about time-consumption and inconvenience -- especially considering that all but the worst of MMORPGs have enough time consumption to keep players occupied.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Ina certain way...
Early MMOs were about Skill...
Newer MMOs are about Effort...
To the OP...
The claim that current MMO's got easy is mainly comming from people like me that played the early MMOs.
Because we are in a position to compare between how it was and how it is, and many of us just find that current MMOs are easier compared to early MMOs.
There is a reasoning behind this and let me give some examples.
In the early MMO, Ultima Online, combat was not an easy affair. There was no Skill bar to place abilities and potions on, there was no macros, there was no addons like you have in WoW to change the UI to your comfort. There was no Tabed selection either.
Combat was semi twitch too, since you had to quickly identify your target pull up their Health bar, have your abilities positioned in your screen in easy to access positions, have your backpack opened your potions easelly clickable arranged in it, have bandages as well, and not too many because if you died, you lost all your items armors etc on yourself, and had to go find or make new armor new potions and bandages in order to join combat again.
You had itemized reagents that were used to cast magical spells, no reagents no spells, that too you havd to get after death.
So it required much more preparation than in a game such as wow, where you lose nothing when you die everything is as you left it where you left it on your body and your back packs and spell bar.
Then UO was a game that did not employ a Level based System of Character Progression, it had a Character Skills based progression, you could choose a set of skills that you had to raise through actions, (such as raising weapon skill in wow by killing mobs).
Skill determined the Hit rate success of your Character, so a Character with 50 swords would miss more than a Character with 100 swords. However, this had no bearing on Damage.
When a swing landed it did same gamage whether it came from a character with 50 swords or one with 100 in swords.
Added to all that, the fact that the progression was not level based had another effect. All character independently of skill levels had the same amount of health (there was some little variation based on stats but not significant).
Additionally creativity and immagination of the player are definite bonuses that can give an edge.
So combine all that together now.
You are a new player just joined 5 days ago, you could actually attack and kill a player that has been playing for a year.
Provided you were more skillfull in terms of twitch and you had quickly understood the UI.
Also, what you call instances, and Instanced Raids did not exist, there were Dungeons with many levels but these were Open to anyone.
You go in with your party, you will meet other parties Killing mobs there. It was not your own version of the Dungeon just for you and your party. Combine that now with Open Free for all PvP, and the concept of Good vs Evil (you could actually choose to be a Good or an Evil Character)
And there you are negotiating Agro and Killing monsters in a Dungeon, for the last hour and a half, you are on Level 3 of the Dungeon approaching Bosses, manage to kill the Boss get the loot, and a party of Baddies (another party of players) surprises you from behind and kills all your party and takes all the loot and goodies plus ll your bellongings weapons jewels etc from your bodies.
You resurect naked.
Added to all of that, UO was a living breathing World, what you said and did to other people had consequences within that world. You could not go around bad mouthing people because quickly they would Slap you in the face and make your life mizerable. So some Social skills were also required too in order to be able to exist and prosper in that game, as well as accountability.
In comparison,
in a newer game such as WoW, you lose nothing when you die, you have your own version of Dungeons no one can attack you while you are killing a boss, there is no real concept of Good vs Evil (NPCs represent Evil) as both Horde and Alliance are good guys just do not like eachother all the time. it is LEvel BAsed, so you are guaranteed success automatically against newer characters of lower level. Your stats are boosted artificially by both levels and Gear so even when all characters are equal level there are differences in gear.
You can Tab select a target and only have to press a few buttons after that really and move your mouse (I will be fair and say that some classes had some twitch elements, Rogues and Hunters mainly).
You can use macros and addons to make things even easier.
No social skills required, and there is no accountability whatsoever, it is not a living breathing world..it is just a game.
My grandmother can be successfull in a game such as WoW if I were to give her an Epic Character. The game insures automatically her success because she does not have to apply any skill, most of it is taken care by the game. Tab select press abilities, sucees guaranteed by level and Gear.
And last but not least, newer MMOs removed the skill factor from the equation and replaced that with effort. It is no longer a question of who has more twitch skill, it is only a question of who has a dumber mind (or naive mind if you prefer not to be harsh) and is willing to play in a repetitious way in order to progress a virtual character.
Those who are successfull today need no immagination no creativity, just the capacity to run on a hamster wheel 1000 times.
In conclusion,
yes, new MMOs have gotten and are very very very easier in comparison.
But you cannot know that if you have not experienced it, you have no point of reference to make a comparison, all you know is Easy and beyond..you have not experienced hard...so your own frame of evaluation takes that "easy" and establishes a new scale of what is considered Easier and harder within it.
Yet to old farts like us, all of it is Easy because we function within a different scale of difficulty.
Question of perception based on Experience.
Now,
The real question here is whether the fact that MMOs got easier or not is a good or bad thing in and of itself. I do not think that when a game is easier this is necessarilly a bad thing personally.
I did have fun in WoW for a time, I really enjoyed its PvP and have many fond memories of it that I will always Cherish, I started having less fun when they started segregagting PvP and PvE gear however and that is the main reason I left.
I could not enjoy all of the game's facets in my own terms, and the game was forcing me to engage in repetitive activities which I did not enjoy if I wanted to break of PvP and explore another facet of the game for a while. And that is when I said, "Screw you Blizz" and left for good.
But the fact that MMOs have gotten easier is not really an issue, what is an issue is the focus on mindless repetitive gameplay that we refer to as Effort.
Repeating an instance for 50 times over and over in order to have a chance to get an item that will give me access to the next level of content to me is not something Fun at all.
I prefered the game when PvP gear and PvE gear were almost the same (and it would be better if it was the same), this way whether you are a PvPer or a PvEer mainly you can still participate in all areas of the game without having to go through repetition of something that you are just curious about and do not enjoy doing on a daily basis.
But someone thought to cpitalise on our curiosity too, lets make everyone having to go through all the steps from the begining that way they pay us a sub longer they may have thought.
Guess what..you can keep the game to yourself.
Cheers!
Order of the Silver Star, OSS
ESKA, Playing MMORPG's since Ultima Online 1997 - Order of the Silver Serpent, Atlantic Shard
** Oops **
Nevermind. Wrong thread.
Newer mmorpg are easier compared to old school mmorpg. However, the challenge is creeping back in, while the streamlined nature and usability are sticking around.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Can't speak to skill in UO or EQ1, but certainly every other one of the 8-10 early MMORPGs I played didn't involve more skill or better gameplay than WOW provided, Surakar.
And by all accounts I've heard, EQ1 only involved more tedium and hassles, rather than more skill.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Because it's truth...
A bunch of bittervets saw that in the newer generation of games you could level to cap in a few weeks, not deal with insane death penalties, and spend less than two hours a day and still get something accomplished. They put their collective neckbeards together and decided that the MMO genre was getting easier and being dumbed down.
Meanwhile in WoW, an explorer was sent on behalf of the bittervet neckbeards to examine and analyze the games that were killing their beloved genre. For weeks the heroic explorer attempted to get into hardmode progression raiding, but the concept of "stay out of the fire" was too difficult to grasp. Upon leaving the game, he proclaimed for all to hear that these new games are easy mode and for casual scrubs.