I absolutely don't agree. The player marketplace is not the same today as it was back then. People need to stop pretending that it is. As soon as MMOs went mainstream, the old-school players were completely dwarfed by the incoming mainstream playerbase. There just aren't enough old-school players to make that kind of game financially viable anymore.
The genie is out of the bottle, it's never going to go back in, no matter how many people wish it would happen.
The exact same thing was said about space sims, 'nobody is interested', 'there aren't enough players for that genre anymore' etc. Then came along Star Citizen, a PC only old school space sim that has broken every crowd funding record out there. I believe they just passed 18 million in crowd funding.
The exact same thing was also said about old school top-down RPG's (ala IE based). Then came along Project Eternity which is shaping up to be very popular.
If the right developer stepped up and did an old school MMO that is pretty much the exact opposite of todays casual standard it would be immensely popular. There is a huge chunk of aging gamers out there that would absolutely love to play something that is challenging.
I'll patiently wait till it happens to prove you wrong.
If the right developer stepped up and did an old school MMO that is pretty much the exact opposite of todays casual standard it would be immensely popular. There is a huge chunk of aging gamers out there that would absolutely love to play something that is challenging.
They can already do that playing D3, Dark Souls, and many other games. Who says they have to play a challenging MMORPGs?
And note that challenging does not equate chores, and boring time sinks. EQ is such a bad game (for me) not because it has a lot of boring and non-challenging parts.
If the right developer stepped up and did an old school MMO that is pretty much the exact opposite of todays casual standard it would be immensely popular. There is a huge chunk of aging gamers out there that would absolutely love to play something that is challenging.
They can already do that playing D3, Dark Souls, and many other games. Who says they have to play a challenging MMORPGs? A lot of us grew up with much more challenging video games throughout the 80's and 90's, why in the world would we want simple easy breezy games now that we are more experienced and skilled? MMORPG included. There's an incredible amount of us that are still playing today, so.....
Yada yada (for me) yada yada.
"Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home. But that's where we're gonna send you if it harelips the governor." - Pat Webb
The problem isn't the playerbase. New players or old. If the right game were available for the right price, (I really don't care what the model is, so long as it's appropriate for the game) Players will play.
The problem is with the most recent games is that developers just don't seem to be designing any longevity into the games. Giving everything to the players so they are done in 2-4 weeks is suicide for an MMORPG.
I think it's true the F2P has created a culture of cash grabbing among some developers. Look at WoW, they even added a cash shop on top of a subscription which is despicable. The games that do try a fair F2P die because no one buys anything. Some F2P put traditional MMO rewards into the cash shop, not all though. Simply put, F2P is socialism. The people who buy from the cash shop subsidize the existence of those who do not or cannot pay. I think this fouls up the community, as it opens the gate for free accounts for greifers, trolls and worst of all RMT/spammers.
Of course there have been good F2P games, Runescape was F2P/subscribe for more. Now it's subscribe + cash shop though because they sold it to a greedy investment group. Mabinogi, Vindictus... Shin Megami Tensei Imagine was good until they put the quest item I needed in the cash shop, thanks Aeria games. Uncharted waters online was good, aside from the fact that you can buy OP ships and in game currency which is the whole goal of the game. Cosmic break - Also good, but I've heard of people spending hundreds trying to get a moe character from the gachapon.
Here's hoping Black desert online has a subscription.
Originally posted by Cephus404
Originally posted by Neo_Viper
Yep, I dislike freeloaders, be it in games or anything else.
How much are you paying to post on these forums again?
I'm guessing you dont' know what ad revenue is. You pay in the form of being "Bombarded" with ads.
If the right developer stepped up and did an old school MMO that is pretty much the exact opposite of todays casual standard it would be immensely popular. There is a huge chunk of aging gamers out there that would absolutely love to play something that is challenging.
They can already do that playing D3, Dark Souls, and many other games. Who says they have to play a challenging MMORPGs? A lot of us grew up with much more challenging video games throughout the 80's and 90's, why in the world would we want simple easy breezy games now that we are more experienced and skilled? MMORPG included. There's an incredible amount of us that are still playing today, so.....
Yada yada (for me) yada yada.
"a lot of us'?
Apparently not "a lot" enough for the MMO devs to notice. And again, there are challenging games like D3 .. just no a MMO, though close enough (for me).
Originally posted by Betakodo I think it's true the F2P has created a culture of cash grabbing among some developers. Look at WoW, they even added a cash shop on top of a subscription which is despicable. The games that do try a fair F2P die because no one buys anything. Some F2P put traditional MMO rewards into the cash shop, not all though. Simply put, F2P is socialism. The people who buy from the cash shop subsidize the existence of those who do not or cannot pay. I think this fouls up the community, as it opens the gate for free accounts for greifers, trolls and worst of all RMT/spammers.Of course there have been good F2P games, Runescape was F2P/subscribe for more. Now it's subscribe + cash shop though because they sold it to a greedy investment group. Mabinogi, Vindictus... Shin Megami Tensei Imagine was good until they put the quest item I needed in the cash shop, thanks Aeria games. Uncharted waters online was good, aside from the fact that you can buy OP ships and in game currency which is the whole goal of the game. Cosmic break - Also good, but I've heard of people spending hundreds trying to get a moe character from the gachapon.Here's hoping Black desert online has a subscription. Originally posted by Cephus404Originally posted by Neo_ViperYep, I dislike freeloaders, be it in games or anything else.
How much are you paying to post on these forums again?I'm guessing you dont' know what ad revenue is. You pay in the form of being "Bombarded" with ads.
Lol, now you are paying in the form of being advertised too? Lol. Ridiculous, now we know how unreasonable your post above it is. Advertising helps pay to provide unappreciative people like you a free place to discuss your favorite/least favorite game genre.
Lol F2P didn't create a cash grabbing culture, capitalism did and if people are willing to pay for it, why shouldn't be companies be allowed to monetize on it? Do you consider the company you work for as cash grabbing capitalists? Because most likely thats what they are too by your logic. Companies EXIST to provide for a demand and grab cash in exchange, Economy 101. If they don't meet the demands of the people (or if not enough value is seen in their product aka price is set too high), they don't make money period.
Lol, F2P is socialism? On what grounds? The prices are set by a central institution and everyone's roles in society are predetermined while the benefits are shared completely equally? That sounds more like subscription to be honest, everyone pays the same price for the an equal amount of benefit spread to everyone. F2P is more like capitalism, you know what America thrives off of and every other major developed country?
Geezus read a book, the only thing fouling up the community is unreasonable and unsound statements like these purely existing to paint an entire industry and community black. Go back to FOX News and take your terrible misinformation with you. You completely fail to realize a company is entirely restricted on what customers allow them to do and just because you don't see value in some of these things doesn't mean most other people don't.
You did took off your rose colored glasses but then you colored yourself blind. The only thing i will agree to is that only subscription based mmo can provide constant high quality. the budget required to constantly upgrade the game quality is not something an f2p or freemium game can secure. even though i still have to find at least one sub based mmo that is doing some "real" quality of life upgrade.
Boobs are LIFE, Boobs are LOVE, Boobs are JUSTICE, Boobs are mankind's HOPES and DREAMS. People who complain about boobs have lost their humanity.
If the right developer stepped up and did an old school MMO that is pretty much the exact opposite of todays casual standard it would be immensely popular. There is a huge chunk of aging gamers out there that would absolutely love to play something that is challenging.
They can already do that playing D3, Dark Souls, and many other games. Who says they have to play a challenging MMORPGs? A lot of us grew up with much more challenging video games throughout the 80's and 90's, why in the world would we want simple easy breezy games now that we are more experienced and skilled? MMORPG included. There's an incredible amount of us that are still playing today, so.....
Yada yada (for me) yada yada.
"a lot of us'?
Apparently not "a lot" enough for the MMO devs to notice. And again, there are challenging games like D3 .. just no a MMO, though close enough (for me).
The market does not function the way you seem to think it does 100% all the time.
Let me give you a semi-recent relevant example from the Television industry. A few years back the CEO of HBO did a fascinating interview regarding HBO's success and the wild trend of Reality TV; he went on to explain that the rash of Reality TV that had suddenly taken over wasn't the result of some massive demand from the viewers themselves. After a few shows the networks quickly realized the true potential of what they had in their hands; they didn't have to pay real actor's a shit tonne of money (this has changed dramatically in some cases as some of the Reality "stars" are now commanding huge salaries). People were still tuning in to the flood of new shows (that sometimes only ran for one short season) but they lost the 18-49 male demographic in the process. HBO had no issue with those lost viewers coming over to watch actual Television shows (that no large demographic was saying they didn't want) which they had and they were/are great ones.
Just because you have an audience (or playerbase) that eats up your product, it doesn't automatically tell you that there is not an even greater goldmine of opportunity waiting to be discovered. We've got a lot of gamers that are all grown up that would very likely enjoy more challenge in their MMOs. People who enjoyed chess growing up don't all of a sudden decide that they no longer want to play the game when they hit thirty and just "downgrade" to checkers for the rest of their lives.
"Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home. But that's where we're gonna send you if it harelips the governor." - Pat Webb
Just because you have an audience (or playerbase) that eats up your product, it doesn't automatically tell you that there is not an even greater goldmine of opportunity waiting to be discovered. We've got a lot of gamers that are all grown up that would very likely enjoy more challenge in their MMOs. People who enjoyed chess growing up don't all of a sudden decide that they no longer want to play the game when they hit thirty and just "downgrade" to checkers for the rest of their lives.
True. But someone needs to be convinced to try.
And it is also different in trying new things (like Game of Thrones when it first started in HBO) and going back to failed ideas.
As i said before, challenge is different than old ideas like chores, waiting, and down-time.
Today games do have challenge. Have you played Diablo 3 lately? (And yes, it is not a MMORPG, but close enough, and don't tell me you don't think that game has challenges).
Originally posted by jesteralways You did took off your rose colored glasses but then you colored yourself blind. The only thing i will agree to is that only subscription based mmo can provide constant high quality. the budget required to constantly upgrade the game quality is not something an f2p or freemium game can secure. even though i still have to find at least one sub based mmo that is doing some "real" quality of life upgrade.
Tell that to LoL and WoT.
WoT ... they have enough budget to make new games.
Just because you have an audience (or playerbase) that eats up your product, it doesn't automatically tell you that there is not an even greater goldmine of opportunity waiting to be discovered. We've got a lot of gamers that are all grown up that would very likely enjoy more challenge in their MMOs. People who enjoyed chess growing up don't all of a sudden decide that they no longer want to play the game when they hit thirty and just "downgrade" to checkers for the rest of their lives.
True. But someone needs to be convinced to try. Yup.
And it is also different in trying new things (like Game of Thrones when it first started in HBO) and going back to failed ideas.
As i said before, challenge is different than old ideas like chores, waiting, and down-time. I don't disagree.
Today games do have challenge. Have you played Diablo 3 lately? (And yes, it is not a MMORPG, but close enough, and don't tell me you don't think that game has challenges). No. While I played Diablo 2 for quite some time, I am not compelled to continue with the series. I am not saying that there are no challenging games to be found, but by and large, the level of difficulty of today's games pales in comparison to those that came before.
"Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home. But that's where we're gonna send you if it harelips the governor." - Pat Webb
Originally posted by Cecropia Originally posted by nariusseldonOriginally posted by CecropiaJust because you have an audience (or playerbase) that eats up your product, it doesn't automatically tell you that there is not an even greater goldmine of opportunity waiting to be discovered. We've got a lot of gamers that are all grown up that would very likely enjoy more challenge in their MMOs. People who enjoyed chess growing up don't all of a sudden decide that they no longer want to play the game when they hit thirty and just "downgrade" to checkers for the rest of their lives.
True. But someone needs to be convinced to try. Yup. And it is also different in trying new things (like Game of Thrones when it first started in HBO) and going back to failed ideas. As i said before, challenge is different than old ideas like chores, waiting, and down-time. I don't disagree. Today games do have challenge. Have you played Diablo 3 lately? (And yes, it is not a MMORPG, but close enough, and don't tell me you don't think that game has challenges). No. While I played Diablo 2 for quite some time, I am not compelled to continue with the series. I am not saying that there are no challenging games to be found, but by and large, the level of difficulty of today's games pales in comparison to those that came before.
If we look at recent games that have added challenge, what response do we see from the general gaming public? Dark/Demon's Souls seemed to delight in crushing players with challenging game play. It also saw sales that while good, fell far behind other RPGs that received comparable air time. GW2 tried adding more challenge and they basically got complaints saying they were trying to goad people into buying things from the cash shop to make things easier.
It is true that there is a market for players who want more challenging content, but those players do not seem to be the same market as the MMORPG market, or if they are in that market, there doesn't seem to be a whole ton of them. It seems that games like Mortal Online or Darkfall are about the scale of what we can expect for the "challenge me" market.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Originally posted by Cecropia Just because you have an audience (or playerbase) that eats up your product, it doesn't automatically tell you that there is not an even greater goldmine of opportunity waiting to be discovered. We've got a lot of gamers that are all grown up that would very likely enjoy more challenge in their MMOs. People who enjoyed chess growing up don't all of a sudden decide that they no longer want to play the game when they hit thirty and just "downgrade" to checkers for the rest of their lives.
I think its a matter of volume within an audience and when you are creating worlds, worlds tend to try to be inclusive to as many as possible because that's how worlds flourish. Just merely trying to cater to an audience that prefers extremely high amounts of challenge would block out much larger groups of people that would have inhabited the world. That's the big dilemma, you can't cater to everyone perfectly, all you can do is make compromises to try to at least appease them enough. Hardcore gamers IMO are just far too demanding for anyone to care to sufficiently try to sate because no matter how much content or how comprehensive an MMO is, there would always be a small group that would eat the entire thing up. It's just not technically possible for any development team to keep up.
I bet the hardcore or elite gamer crowd can't even agree on what defines an MMO as providing more challenge. To some it could be higher health and more damage on mobs, to others it can be amounted to time spent on achieving max level or even just plain old achieving anything at all. To others it can be a matter of how twitchy, to others it might mean being forced to choose between making proper decisions between skills that provide dilemmas etc. How can an MMO really cater to that without excluding a much bigger portion of the audience that they are also trying to attract?
Look at the rate people eat through single player games like Skyrim even with additional content, some people can get through the majority of the content in a month and that game doesn't even have to include social tools, economies and other complex systems that are expected out of an MMO. It's not hard to see that these demands can be unreasonable to fully try to cater towards when a company's resources have limits. I mean maybe the hardcore elite has answers to solve these types of dilemmas i.e. organizing a group of only a few hundred people to provide enough content to sate hundreds of thousands and possibly even millions of others.
No. While I played Diablo 2 for quite some time, I am not compelled to continue with the series. I am not saying that there are no challenging games to be found, but by and large, the level of difficulty of today's games pales in comparison to those that came before.
If you just look at the "challenge" dimension, D3 is easily more challenging than D2, just because of the MP levels in conjunction of hard core mode.
If you look at MMO only, i do not disagree. However, if you look at SP games, many are quite challenging just because there is usually an difficulty option. Now, i do not have actual data compared to the past (and how do you define "that came before"? 5 years ago, 10 years ago?)
From my personal experience, i do not need to go to the top difficulty level in all the SP games i have played to find the "right" level of challenge for me. So to me, the challenge levels available in the market are perfect.
"People who enjoyed chess growing up don't all of a sudden decide that they no longer want to play the game when they hit thirty and just "downgrade" to checkers for the rest of their lives."
Indeed they do not, but when the chess club became mostly players from the console generation those chess competitions became fewer and fewer, checkers became the only game in town. Now the gaming industry is chasing social media types to increase the player base ten fold. Already the checkers club is not doing as many of those checkers competitions as it used to, anyone for a game of snakes and ladders?
If we look at recent games that have added challenge, what response do we see from the general gaming public? Dark/Demon's Souls seemed to delight in crushing players with challenging game play. It also saw sales that while good, fell far behind other RPGs that received comparable air time. GW2 tried adding more challenge and they basically got complaints saying they were trying to goad people into buying things from the cash shop to make things easier.
It is true that there is a market for players who want more challenging content, but those players do not seem to be the same market as the MMORPG market, or if they are in that market, there doesn't seem to be a whole ton of them. It seems that games like Mortal Online or Darkfall are about the scale of what we can expect for the "challenge me" market.
I am one of those people who enjoy challenge. I play all my games on hardest settings if I have the chance. I get bored if things get easy.
I mostly agree with your first paragraph, but disagree with the second. I couldn't care less about MO or DF. They are not unpopular because they are challenging. They are unpopular because they are horrible, horrible games. MO in particular.
Also, there's a level of hard above the "challenging" hard, which is "fuck you hard". Demon's Souls and Dark Souls are of the latter type. Sometimes they don't give you any hint or warning what is going to happen next. The game just randomly rams a fist up your ass, and works you like a sock puppet. There are many instances like this spread throughout the length of the game, and the only way to avoid them the first time, is to know about them. Someone would have had to spoil the encounter for you.
I am not terribly on-board with encounters like this, without these encounters it wouldn't be all that hard, but I found the game very refreshing still. If not the challenge, the distinct style then. I would recommend Dark Souls to any fan of RPGs. However, if you don't own a console and you don't own a controller you can plug into your PC. Don't even try: The PC port is quite horrible control-wise. You need a controller.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
"People who enjoyed chess growing up don't all of a sudden decide that they no longer want to play the game when they hit thirty and just "downgrade" to checkers for the rest of their lives."
Indeed they do not, but when the chess club became mostly players from the console generation those chess competitions became fewer and fewer, checkers became the only game in town. Now the gaming industry is chasing social media types to increase the player base ten fold. Already the checkers club is not doing as many of those checkers competitions as it used to, anyone for a game of snakes and ladders?
Are we doing bad metaphors again?
As I see it, we've upgraded quite a bit from the old school MMORPGs. When was the last time you've seen a camp? Grind as the main method of progression? How about them hour-long down times? PK? Farming to recouping losses?
I remember days in a number of old MMOs where you just walked out of the city and saw scores of players just hacking away at respawning monsters again and again... Boy those were the days, eh? I wonder if most of people's adventures in those games exist entirely inside their head.
Condescension intended.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
"People who enjoyed chess growing up don't all of a sudden decide that they no longer want to play the game when they hit thirty and just "downgrade" to checkers for the rest of their lives."
Indeed they do not, but when the chess club became mostly players from the console generation those chess competitions became fewer and fewer, checkers became the only game in town. Now the gaming industry is chasing social media types to increase the player base ten fold. Already the checkers club is not doing as many of those checkers competitions as it used to, anyone for a game of snakes and ladders?
"chess" is still there. YOu have D3 MP10 hard core. Dark Souls, Witcher King, and and many games that are actually hard on hard mode.
Even in MMOs, i doubt many here can do hard core raid.
Sure, easy content still is more abundant but so what? a) It is a reflection of the market demand, and no amount of whining can change that, and b) since there is challenging games available, no one says you need to play a easy one.
There's nothing like a bad metaphor and some condescension to get the day going.
Of course MMOs have come on leaps and bounds as well. It is the better in every way crowd that I question. As to the difficulty level, gaming overall was harder. Saying you can find a few games which have hard modes does not cut it. Not everything old school was better by any means, the lack of grouping strategy now needed is a loss, corpse runs are not.
There's nothing like a bad metaphor and some condescension to get the day going.
Of course MMOs have come on leaps and bounds as well. It is the better in every way crowd that I question. As to the difficulty level, gaming overall was harder. Saying you can find a few games which have hard modes does not cut it. Not everything old school was better by any means, the lack of grouping strategy now needed is a loss, corpse runs are not.
I agree, games in general have become easier. But as long as I am provided with alternate difficulty options, I am not really bothered by it. I am happy to play my games on harder difficulty settings. However it was worse back in the day when there was only one mode which was hard.
And regarding grouping, people are merely playing the game the way they want. If they want to solo, so be it. Most players play alone most of the time. There's no point fighting it.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
There's nothing like a bad metaphor and some condescension to get the day going.
Of course MMOs have come on leaps and bounds as well. It is the better in every way crowd that I question. As to the difficulty level, gaming overall was harder. Saying you can find a few games which have hard modes does not cut it. Not everything old school was better by any means, the lack of grouping strategy now needed is a loss, corpse runs are not.
I agree, games in general have become easier. But as long as I am provided with alternate difficulty options, I am not really bothered by it. I am happy to play my games on harder difficulty settings. However it was worse back in the day when there was only one mode which was hard.
And regarding grouping, people are merely playing the game the way they want. If they want to solo, so be it. Most players play alone most of the time. There's no point fighting it.
I am keen on different difficulty settings in solo games but you can't do that in a MMO. I would question the underlining difficulty in some franchises as well. Franchises which are taking genres down a path they are setting out. Take CoD a game where you can send in your squad and they can sometimes do the level for you. That's not a question of difficulty, it is a question of how the game has been set up, with handholding becoming so extreme you do not need to play.
I will not support something just because most people do it, that is a strange way to decide your opinions. But on the grouping issue I am referring to the dumping down of the technique as much as lack of grouping. MMO's are too solo and what grouping there is has less strategy.
You go in an all out rant against F2P, yet mention Runescape which has F2P option as one of your favorite games. F2P can work very well in a MMO, if done right.
I am keen on different difficulty settings in solo games but you can't do that in a MMO. I would question the underlining difficulty in some franchises as well. Franchises which are taking genres down a path they are setting out. Take CoD a game where you can send in your squad and they can sometimes do the level for you. That's not a question of difficulty, it is a question of how the game has been set up, with handholding becoming so extreme you do not need to play.
Of course you can, and it has been done before. WOW has 3 levels of raiding. DDO has difficulty levels in dungeons. You can argue it is not done enough, but certainly it is not only can be done, it has been done multiple times.
CoD is just one game. Take any stealth game, no NPC is doing anything for you.
I will not support something just because most people do it, that is a strange way to decide your opinions. But on the grouping issue I am referring to the dumping down of the technique as much as lack of grouping. MMO's are too solo and what grouping there is has less strategy.
I agree. That is why i am not shy from stating that i like solo MMORPGs, despite most here do not like it.
Originally posted by Toferio You go in an all out rant against F2P, yet mention Runescape which has F2P option as one of your favorite games. F2P can work very well in a MMO, if done right.
Runescape isn't a free to play game, it's a F2p/P2P option game, and it used to work just fine.
The points I'm making here are against completely F2P games that rely on cash-shops for funding basically. Obviously if a game could be free to play and have no cash-shop I'd be fine with that, but that's feasibly impossible. Runescape's subscription model used to be perfect, it gives you a good limited trial, but the subs allowed the entire game to be played.
Now that there's a cash shop I have no respect for the game but it used to work well.
Never fear, your dream MMO will be here.... just give me a decade or two to finely hone my Game development and design abilities as well as start a Game Design Studio. Thank you for your patience.
Comments
The exact same thing was said about space sims, 'nobody is interested', 'there aren't enough players for that genre anymore' etc. Then came along Star Citizen, a PC only old school space sim that has broken every crowd funding record out there. I believe they just passed 18 million in crowd funding.
The exact same thing was also said about old school top-down RPG's (ala IE based). Then came along Project Eternity which is shaping up to be very popular.
If the right developer stepped up and did an old school MMO that is pretty much the exact opposite of todays casual standard it would be immensely popular. There is a huge chunk of aging gamers out there that would absolutely love to play something that is challenging.
I'll patiently wait till it happens to prove you wrong.
They can already do that playing D3, Dark Souls, and many other games. Who says they have to play a challenging MMORPGs?
And note that challenging does not equate chores, and boring time sinks. EQ is such a bad game (for me) not because it has a lot of boring and non-challenging parts.
"Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home. But that's where we're gonna send you if it harelips the governor." - Pat Webb
Bingo.
I think it's true the F2P has created a culture of cash grabbing among some developers. Look at WoW, they even added a cash shop on top of a subscription which is despicable. The games that do try a fair F2P die because no one buys anything. Some F2P put traditional MMO rewards into the cash shop, not all though. Simply put, F2P is socialism. The people who buy from the cash shop subsidize the existence of those who do not or cannot pay. I think this fouls up the community, as it opens the gate for free accounts for greifers, trolls and worst of all RMT/spammers.
Of course there have been good F2P games, Runescape was F2P/subscribe for more. Now it's subscribe + cash shop though because they sold it to a greedy investment group. Mabinogi, Vindictus... Shin Megami Tensei Imagine was good until they put the quest item I needed in the cash shop, thanks Aeria games. Uncharted waters online was good, aside from the fact that you can buy OP ships and in game currency which is the whole goal of the game. Cosmic break - Also good, but I've heard of people spending hundreds trying to get a moe character from the gachapon.
Here's hoping Black desert online has a subscription.
I'm guessing you dont' know what ad revenue is. You pay in the form of being "Bombarded" with ads."a lot of us'?
Apparently not "a lot" enough for the MMO devs to notice. And again, there are challenging games like D3 .. just no a MMO, though close enough (for me).
I'm guessing you dont' know what ad revenue is. You pay in the form of being "Bombarded" with ads.
Lol, now you are paying in the form of being advertised too? Lol. Ridiculous, now we know how unreasonable your post above it is. Advertising helps pay to provide unappreciative people like you a free place to discuss your favorite/least favorite game genre.
Lol F2P didn't create a cash grabbing culture, capitalism did and if people are willing to pay for it, why shouldn't be companies be allowed to monetize on it? Do you consider the company you work for as cash grabbing capitalists? Because most likely thats what they are too by your logic. Companies EXIST to provide for a demand and grab cash in exchange, Economy 101. If they don't meet the demands of the people (or if not enough value is seen in their product aka price is set too high), they don't make money period.
Lol, F2P is socialism? On what grounds? The prices are set by a central institution and everyone's roles in society are predetermined while the benefits are shared completely equally? That sounds more like subscription to be honest, everyone pays the same price for the an equal amount of benefit spread to everyone. F2P is more like capitalism, you know what America thrives off of and every other major developed country?
Geezus read a book, the only thing fouling up the community is unreasonable and unsound statements like these purely existing to paint an entire industry and community black. Go back to FOX News and take your terrible misinformation with you. You completely fail to realize a company is entirely restricted on what customers allow them to do and just because you don't see value in some of these things doesn't mean most other people don't.
Boobs are LIFE, Boobs are LOVE, Boobs are JUSTICE, Boobs are mankind's HOPES and DREAMS. People who complain about boobs have lost their humanity.
The market does not function the way you seem to think it does 100% all the time.
Let me give you a semi-recent relevant example from the Television industry. A few years back the CEO of HBO did a fascinating interview regarding HBO's success and the wild trend of Reality TV; he went on to explain that the rash of Reality TV that had suddenly taken over wasn't the result of some massive demand from the viewers themselves. After a few shows the networks quickly realized the true potential of what they had in their hands; they didn't have to pay real actor's a shit tonne of money (this has changed dramatically in some cases as some of the Reality "stars" are now commanding huge salaries). People were still tuning in to the flood of new shows (that sometimes only ran for one short season) but they lost the 18-49 male demographic in the process. HBO had no issue with those lost viewers coming over to watch actual Television shows (that no large demographic was saying they didn't want) which they had and they were/are great ones.
Just because you have an audience (or playerbase) that eats up your product, it doesn't automatically tell you that there is not an even greater goldmine of opportunity waiting to be discovered. We've got a lot of gamers that are all grown up that would very likely enjoy more challenge in their MMOs. People who enjoyed chess growing up don't all of a sudden decide that they no longer want to play the game when they hit thirty and just "downgrade" to checkers for the rest of their lives.
"Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home. But that's where we're gonna send you if it harelips the governor." - Pat Webb
True. But someone needs to be convinced to try.
And it is also different in trying new things (like Game of Thrones when it first started in HBO) and going back to failed ideas.
As i said before, challenge is different than old ideas like chores, waiting, and down-time.
Today games do have challenge. Have you played Diablo 3 lately? (And yes, it is not a MMORPG, but close enough, and don't tell me you don't think that game has challenges).
Tell that to LoL and WoT.
WoT ... they have enough budget to make new games.
"Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home. But that's where we're gonna send you if it harelips the governor." - Pat Webb
If we look at recent games that have added challenge, what response do we see from the general gaming public? Dark/Demon's Souls seemed to delight in crushing players with challenging game play. It also saw sales that while good, fell far behind other RPGs that received comparable air time. GW2 tried adding more challenge and they basically got complaints saying they were trying to goad people into buying things from the cash shop to make things easier.
It is true that there is a market for players who want more challenging content, but those players do not seem to be the same market as the MMORPG market, or if they are in that market, there doesn't seem to be a whole ton of them. It seems that games like Mortal Online or Darkfall are about the scale of what we can expect for the "challenge me" market.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I think its a matter of volume within an audience and when you are creating worlds, worlds tend to try to be inclusive to as many as possible because that's how worlds flourish. Just merely trying to cater to an audience that prefers extremely high amounts of challenge would block out much larger groups of people that would have inhabited the world. That's the big dilemma, you can't cater to everyone perfectly, all you can do is make compromises to try to at least appease them enough. Hardcore gamers IMO are just far too demanding for anyone to care to sufficiently try to sate because no matter how much content or how comprehensive an MMO is, there would always be a small group that would eat the entire thing up. It's just not technically possible for any development team to keep up.
I bet the hardcore or elite gamer crowd can't even agree on what defines an MMO as providing more challenge. To some it could be higher health and more damage on mobs, to others it can be amounted to time spent on achieving max level or even just plain old achieving anything at all. To others it can be a matter of how twitchy, to others it might mean being forced to choose between making proper decisions between skills that provide dilemmas etc. How can an MMO really cater to that without excluding a much bigger portion of the audience that they are also trying to attract?
Look at the rate people eat through single player games like Skyrim even with additional content, some people can get through the majority of the content in a month and that game doesn't even have to include social tools, economies and other complex systems that are expected out of an MMO. It's not hard to see that these demands can be unreasonable to fully try to cater towards when a company's resources have limits. I mean maybe the hardcore elite has answers to solve these types of dilemmas i.e. organizing a group of only a few hundred people to provide enough content to sate hundreds of thousands and possibly even millions of others.
If you just look at the "challenge" dimension, D3 is easily more challenging than D2, just because of the MP levels in conjunction of hard core mode.
If you look at MMO only, i do not disagree. However, if you look at SP games, many are quite challenging just because there is usually an difficulty option. Now, i do not have actual data compared to the past (and how do you define "that came before"? 5 years ago, 10 years ago?)
From my personal experience, i do not need to go to the top difficulty level in all the SP games i have played to find the "right" level of challenge for me. So to me, the challenge levels available in the market are perfect.
"People who enjoyed chess growing up don't all of a sudden decide that they no longer want to play the game when they hit thirty and just "downgrade" to checkers for the rest of their lives."
Indeed they do not, but when the chess club became mostly players from the console generation those chess competitions became fewer and fewer, checkers became the only game in town. Now the gaming industry is chasing social media types to increase the player base ten fold. Already the checkers club is not doing as many of those checkers competitions as it used to, anyone for a game of snakes and ladders?
I am one of those people who enjoy challenge. I play all my games on hardest settings if I have the chance. I get bored if things get easy.
I mostly agree with your first paragraph, but disagree with the second. I couldn't care less about MO or DF. They are not unpopular because they are challenging. They are unpopular because they are horrible, horrible games. MO in particular.
Also, there's a level of hard above the "challenging" hard, which is "fuck you hard". Demon's Souls and Dark Souls are of the latter type. Sometimes they don't give you any hint or warning what is going to happen next. The game just randomly rams a fist up your ass, and works you like a sock puppet. There are many instances like this spread throughout the length of the game, and the only way to avoid them the first time, is to know about them. Someone would have had to spoil the encounter for you.
I am not terribly on-board with encounters like this, without these encounters it wouldn't be all that hard, but I found the game very refreshing still. If not the challenge, the distinct style then. I would recommend Dark Souls to any fan of RPGs. However, if you don't own a console and you don't own a controller you can plug into your PC. Don't even try: The PC port is quite horrible control-wise. You need a controller.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Are we doing bad metaphors again?
As I see it, we've upgraded quite a bit from the old school MMORPGs. When was the last time you've seen a camp? Grind as the main method of progression? How about them hour-long down times? PK? Farming to recouping losses?
I remember days in a number of old MMOs where you just walked out of the city and saw scores of players just hacking away at respawning monsters again and again... Boy those were the days, eh? I wonder if most of people's adventures in those games exist entirely inside their head.
Condescension intended.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
"chess" is still there. YOu have D3 MP10 hard core. Dark Souls, Witcher King, and and many games that are actually hard on hard mode.
Even in MMOs, i doubt many here can do hard core raid.
Sure, easy content still is more abundant but so what? a) It is a reflection of the market demand, and no amount of whining can change that, and b) since there is challenging games available, no one says you need to play a easy one.
There's nothing like a bad metaphor and some condescension to get the day going.
Of course MMOs have come on leaps and bounds as well. It is the better in every way crowd that I question. As to the difficulty level, gaming overall was harder. Saying you can find a few games which have hard modes does not cut it. Not everything old school was better by any means, the lack of grouping strategy now needed is a loss, corpse runs are not.
I agree, games in general have become easier. But as long as I am provided with alternate difficulty options, I am not really bothered by it. I am happy to play my games on harder difficulty settings. However it was worse back in the day when there was only one mode which was hard.
And regarding grouping, people are merely playing the game the way they want. If they want to solo, so be it. Most players play alone most of the time. There's no point fighting it.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
I am keen on different difficulty settings in solo games but you can't do that in a MMO. I would question the underlining difficulty in some franchises as well. Franchises which are taking genres down a path they are setting out. Take CoD a game where you can send in your squad and they can sometimes do the level for you. That's not a question of difficulty, it is a question of how the game has been set up, with handholding becoming so extreme you do not need to play.
I will not support something just because most people do it, that is a strange way to decide your opinions. But on the grouping issue I am referring to the dumping down of the technique as much as lack of grouping. MMO's are too solo and what grouping there is has less strategy.
The points I'm making here are against completely F2P games that rely on cash-shops for funding basically. Obviously if a game could be free to play and have no cash-shop I'd be fine with that, but that's feasibly impossible. Runescape's subscription model used to be perfect, it gives you a good limited trial, but the subs allowed the entire game to be played.
Now that there's a cash shop I have no respect for the game but it used to work well.
Never fear, your dream MMO will be here....
just give me a decade or two to finely hone my Game development
and design abilities as well as start a Game Design Studio.
Thank you for your patience.