Harsh death penalties will drive some away to be sure. I personally don't think that's where the change is needed.
Like you said, content needs to be engaging. Treadmills are ok I guess for those that like them, but not make your game built around the need for them at endgame making the journey there worthless, necessity/chore and taking the time it takes to bake a cake.
I know the difficulty in pleasing everyone, is just not possible. Maybe as time goes on and Mmos keep turning out like the latest themeparks someone will change it up with more content DURING the trip to level cap and maybe it'll catch on. Who's to say?!
Why do people care about driving people away? How about disaggregate a bit? Stop trying to get everybody under one tent.
I'm not trying to do anything, I was agreeing with death penalties not being the answer to making more engaging Mmo's, for me. I simply dislike the way Mmo's are today, too easy but it shouldn't mean that making harsher death penalties is the way to go.
Hope that clarifies things.
I know you're personally not trying to do these things, but your post makes it sound like driving people away is inherently a bad thing. I take issue with that, if it is indeed your position.
I know you're personally not trying to do these things, but your post makes it sound like driving people away is inherently a bad thing. I take issue with that, if it is indeed your position.
No, I was agreeing that a decision to do so by a game might do that to those who dislike harsh death penalties. I come from games that had them so I'm neutral to it and would adapt if the game I play had it.
Seeing as many of us gamers are already polarized to different likes and playstyles, I find this a good thing as it tells devs not to try to put everyone under the same tent trying to please everyone.
Actually I agree. They have become too easy. And easy content doesn't engage the player because they don't have to think. I think content needs to be more difficult, however they have to do it in a way that engages the player not pushes them out of the game. What you see now is various forms of mindless zombie treadmills designed to keep you busy with repetitive tasks by dangling a carrot in front of people. I don't think that is good for the health of the game. It is fine if the content is fun and engaging but simple repetition for rewards without engaging players is a recipe for burnout. I think severe death penalties work against that though, instead of engaging the player you are frustrating them. If you make it hard without making it overly punitive for failure I think you find that players are more willing to fail and learn from their mistakes and try again, and that pushes player improvement and the satisfaction to the player that comes with it.
Harsh death penalties will drive some away to be sure. I personally don't think that's where the change is needed.
Like you said, content needs to be engaging. Treadmills are ok I guess for those that like them, but not make your game built around the need for them at endgame making the journey there worthless, necessity/chore and taking the time it takes to bake a cake.
I know the difficulty in pleasing everyone, is just not possible. Maybe as time goes on and Mmos keep turning out like the latest themeparks someone will change it up with more content DURING the trip to level cap and maybe it'll catch on. Who's to say?!
Why do people care about driving people away? How about disaggregate a bit? Stop trying to get everybody under one tent.
I agree with this too. I would love to see more niche games that appeal to a more specific kind of player. I think the reason why we don't is basically money. Games require a lot of money to make these days, and people demand more and more on the graphics side of things etc... etc... etc... , making a niche game can be scary because if the niche you are targeting turns out to be a lot smaller than you estimated or you miss the mark it can kill a game company. It is kind of all your chicks in one basket vs. lots of baskets kind of thing.
Actually I agree. They have become too easy. And easy content doesn't engage the player because they don't have to think. I think content needs to be more difficult, however they have to do it in a way that engages the player not pushes them out of the game. What you see now is various forms of mindless zombie treadmills designed to keep you busy with repetitive tasks by dangling a carrot in front of people. I don't think that is good for the health of the game. It is fine if the content is fun and engaging but simple repetition for rewards without engaging players is a recipe for burnout. I think severe death penalties work against that though, instead of engaging the player you are frustrating them. If you make it hard without making it overly punitive for failure I think you find that players are more willing to fail and learn from their mistakes and try again, and that pushes player improvement and the satisfaction to the player that comes with it.
Harsh death penalties will drive some away to be sure. I personally don't think that's where the change is needed.
Like you said, content needs to be engaging. Treadmills are ok I guess for those that like them, but not make your game built around the need for them at endgame making the journey there worthless, necessity/chore and taking the time it takes to bake a cake.
I know the difficulty in pleasing everyone, is just not possible. Maybe as time goes on and Mmos keep turning out like the latest themeparks someone will change it up with more content DURING the trip to level cap and maybe it'll catch on. Who's to say?!
Why do people care about driving people away? How about disaggregate a bit? Stop trying to get everybody under one tent.
I agree with this too. I would love to see more niche games that appeal to a more specific kind of player. I think the reason why we don't is basically money. Games require a lot of money to make these days, and people demand more and more on the graphics side of things etc... etc... etc... , making a niche game can be scary because if the niche you are targeting turns out to be a lot smaller than you estimated or you miss the mark it can kill a game company. It is kind of all your chicks in one basket vs. lots of baskets kind of thing.
Well the genre used to be a lot smaller than it is now. So I find it hard to believe that it needs to grow in order to survive. I agree that it's about money, I just don't agree that mmos require this much money. I don't need super top tier AAA graphics and polish. I just want a good game.
Actually I agree. They have become too easy. And easy content doesn't engage the player because they don't have to think. I think content needs to be more difficult, however they have to do it in a way that engages the player not pushes them out of the game. What you see now is various forms of mindless zombie treadmills designed to keep you busy with repetitive tasks by dangling a carrot in front of people. I don't think that is good for the health of the game. It is fine if the content is fun and engaging but simple repetition for rewards without engaging players is a recipe for burnout. I think severe death penalties work against that though, instead of engaging the player you are frustrating them. If you make it hard without making it overly punitive for failure I think you find that players are more willing to fail and learn from their mistakes and try again, and that pushes player improvement and the satisfaction to the player that comes with it.
Harsh death penalties will drive some away to be sure. I personally don't think that's where the change is needed.
Like you said, content needs to be engaging. Treadmills are ok I guess for those that like them, but not make your game built around the need for them at endgame making the journey there worthless, necessity/chore and taking the time it takes to bake a cake.
I know the difficulty in pleasing everyone, is just not possible. Maybe as time goes on and Mmos keep turning out like the latest themeparks someone will change it up with more content DURING the trip to level cap and maybe it'll catch on. Who's to say?!
Why do people care about driving people away? How about disaggregate a bit? Stop trying to get everybody under one tent.
I agree with this too. I would love to see more niche games that appeal to a more specific kind of player. I think the reason why we don't is basically money. Games require a lot of money to make these days, and people demand more and more on the graphics side of things etc... etc... etc... , making a niche game can be scary because if the niche you are targeting turns out to be a lot smaller than you estimated or you miss the mark it can kill a game company. It is kind of all your chicks in one basket vs. lots of baskets kind of thing.
Well the genre used to be a lot smaller than it is now. So I find it hard to believe that it needs to grow in order to survive. I agree that it's about money, I just don't agree that mmos require this much money. I don't need super top tier AAA graphics and polish. I just want a good game.
I think there is a lot more overhead to keep up with increased player expectations. Personally I don't need cutting edge graphics either if the game is fun. I still play a lot of old games. However you will find there are features used to sell a game and those features aren't necessarily the same features that keep people playing. Graphics is one of those. It can be a big factor in why someone first looks at a game, but not necessarily why they choose to play it or continue to play it. But I completely agree, I wish more developers focused their limited funds on gameplay and a focused niche of players. I can understand why that is a scary proposition though.
One first, I don't presume EQ-Era MMOs as "difficult". Most it was just tedious and you just can`t bring that back.
That out of the way: it depends WHAT you see as difficult.
You see, I am a RPG gamer. Meaning: I love it that my characters are only as strong as THEIR skills, not MY skills, because to be blunt, I am a dork. I have slow reactions, always had always will have. So while I enjoy a bit more action-y combat to get away from the stale Everquest/WoW combat of being fronzen to the ground and fight standing still, I have close to no reaction and coordination skill.
I prefer my characters, as is the case in classic Role Playing Games, to be defined by their stats and skills. Not by my reaction quickness. Simply because I have none and it rules me out of games.
But it can still be more difficult. Take Skyrim VS The Elder Scrolls Online. Both are by and large not difficult as in an action game. Though I haven`t played TESO, I will assume that for now. So, the difficulty is Skyrim are traps, are tough bosses, and enemies jumping at your from dark corners. Are sometimes many of them. That is why Skyrim, despite being a RPG without challanging action combat was difficult at times, and TESO is not. TESO, like most MMOs, has NO difficult traps. No difficult boss mobs besides giving them 200 times as much health and letting them do 10 times as much damage. That`s not difficult. That`s just tedious.
One thing I`d want to see is the return of dangerous dungeons, so we can keep the open surface world moderate in difficulty, but for advanced difficulty you could roam into dungeons. And you can add a few dangerous zones. Like Nektolous Forest. Hell, I recall Nektulous Forest in Everquest 2 in the early days, and and it was a DAMN DANGEROUS zone! I cursed it often, but when I finally managed to cross the Nek Forest the first time, I felt like I had actually ACCOMPLISHED something. I know a game can`t be like that everywhere. But a MMO has to have dangerous zones as well, but zones you can still do solo.
And traps. Can we pls make traps dangerous again? I recall how I went into Neverwinter-Dungeons as Thief, hoping to sneak ahead and disarm traps and we would slowly explore cool and deadly dungeons, as I knew it from D&D the Pen and Paper evening. Oh NOTHING could have been further from the reality! The groups RAN through the dungeons, as if there was a price for fastness! They just WALZED over the traps, because they made WAAAY too less damage. And want those traps to be near deadly so people are again AFRAID in dungeons! When I look at videos from TESO or what, I feel just let down how fast people can run through dungeons, and it just feels wrong. A dungeon should not be like a walk through a shopping mall! That just cheapens the experience! Let the death penality be minor, so it doesn`t harm people overmuch, but let dungeons and some areas be dangerous again.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
MMOs have become a lot easier over time. UO was hard because you had to look for mountains to mine and not nodes just strewn about the place. You also had the chance of being killed and loosing all your equipment to monsters or players. The monster back when I played use to take items as well.
In EQ the raid zones would take a week to complete and would require team work to do it. The monks and rogues would go out and pull the monsters back to a safe spot. Then the whole group could move forwards. Now its enter a room and fight a boss, you can't leave that room till the fight ends or you die.
Most dungeons you can bypass the trash mobs and go straight for the boss to kill it and get the big shiny loot at the end. This makes dungeons a trivial matter and hardly worth the time. There is never any thought to dungeons anymore. The last real mmo that had difficult dungeons was Age of Conan that forced you to fight your way through to the end.
Even in single player RPGs dungeons now are easy compared to Baldurs Gate and Dragon Age Origins.
Crafting in most mmo's is also a pointless task and is just a money sink. The only mmos that has decent crafting is Eve Online, UO, SWG, Vangaurd and the old SWG (pre NGE). Other than that in all the other mmo's there is no real need to craft.
MMO's today are far to casual and gratification orientated. WoW has done this to the market and now we suffer because of it as developers think this is what the hardcore mmo player wants. Thankfully though this train of thought is slowly being halted and turned around and we are now starting to see a new wave in design coming to mmo's.
Not going to take anything away from WoW it was a decent game and did many things right it also brought a lot of people to the MMO genre. It has been a prisoner of its own success though and developers have tried to emulate it. This is its only failing.
If dungeons were are deadly as Baldus Gate and Icewind Dale RPG's and crafting once again has a real meaning behind it like in UO with full looting rights in pvp as well. Then the genre would be heading back on track.
One first, I don't presume EQ-Era MMOs as "difficult". Most it was just tedious and you just can`t bring that back.
That out of the way: it depends WHAT you see as difficult.
You see, I am a RPG gamer. Meaning: I love it that my characters are only as strong as THEIR skills, not MY skills, because to be blunt, I am a dork. I have slow reactions, always had always will have. So while I enjoy a bit more action-y combat to get away from the stale Everquest/WoW combat of being fronzen to the ground and fight standing still, I have close to no reaction and coordination skill.
I prefer my characters, as is the case in classic Role Playing Games, to be defined by their stats and skills. Not by my reaction quickness. Simply because I have none and it rules me out of games.
But it can still be more difficult. Take Skyrim VS The Elder Scrolls Online. Both are by and large not difficult as in an action game. Though I haven`t played TESO, I will assume that for now. So, the difficulty is Skyrim are traps, are tough bosses, and enemies jumping at your from dark corners. Are sometimes many of them. That is why Skyrim, despite being a RPG without challanging action combat was difficult at times, and TESO is not. TESO, like most MMOs, has NO difficult traps. No difficult boss mobs besides giving them 200 times as much health and letting them do 10 times as much damage. That`s not difficult. That`s just tedious.
One thing I`d want to see is the return of dangerous dungeons, so we can keep the open surface world moderate in difficulty, but for advanced difficulty you could roam into dungeons. And you can add a few dangerous zones. Like Nektolous Forest. Hell, I recall Nektulous Forest in Everquest 2 in the early days, and and it was a DAMN DANGEROUS zone! I cursed it often, but when I finally managed to cross the Nek Forest the first time, I felt like I had actually ACCOMPLISHED something. I know a game can`t be like that everywhere. But a MMO has to have dangerous zones as well, but zones you can still do solo.
And traps. Can we pls make traps dangerous again? I recall how I went into Neverwinter-Dungeons as Thief, hoping to sneak ahead and disarm traps and we would slowly explore cool and deadly dungeons, as I knew it from D&D the Pen and Paper evening. Oh NOTHING could have been further from the reality! The groups RAN through the dungeons, as if there was a price for fastness! They just WALZED over the traps, because they made WAAAY too less damage. And want those traps to be near deadly so people are again AFRAID in dungeons! When I look at videos from TESO or what, I feel just let down how fast people can run through dungeons, and it just feels wrong. A dungeon should not be like a walk through a shopping mall! That just cheapens the experience! Let the death penality be minor, so it doesn`t harm people overmuch, but let dungeons and some areas be dangerous again.
I really miss dangerous dungeons too. The problem with traps and MMORPGs tends to be that they are fun for the thief, but not a whole lot of fun for everybody sitting there waiting for the thief. In Pen and Paper it can go by fairly fast because the DM just has to say what happened, in an online game everyone actually has to sit there for an extended period of time waiting. That is one of the great things about P&P, the variable speed, the DM can speed up and skip over unimportant bits(like saying you walk for 2 days instead of describing every step of the entire journey) and then slow down the pace for the important/interesting bits. The closest thing we have to traps now are "elevators of doom" lol. I am sure they could come up with something if they set their minds to it though.
How I would love to find a mmo to challenge me... It seems that today all you have to do is log int to be given an epic item of some describtion that you have not worked for.
Non online game do not have this problem as you can change the difficulty setting to your liking and even download mods to make it even more challenging for you which is something I find myself doing more often.
But with mmo's you are are forced to play by the developeres rule set which is all to often easy mode by far.
For one example lets look at leveling a character to maximum level. When the large mmo's first hit the scene it took a monumental effort to achieve maximum level and that followed a real sense of accomplishment when finally hitting top level on your toon. . .But nowadays if you do not hit maximum level within a week then something must be broken within the game. Do not even get me started on experience boosting potions, resting experience and items that boost your experience.....Help.
Does anyone posting here actually believe MMOs today are as hard as they used to be?
"They don’t want us to leave because they ask us to try hard." That's been the design philosophy since WoW and it has only got worse and still is heading in that direction.
It does not matter if you think it was more grind or more skills, old MMOs were harder than the ones today.
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Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
Could be. Or we just become more skilled. Also if somebody have full epic armor and rest from raiding then new expansion will be too easy. But not for those that do not raid. Never will all be happy. It is market do dictate what we have today. Overall I see more good changes then bad over years.
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Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
Keep in mind thata lot of difficulty in the past was - in many cases - equivalent to mindless timesink and repeting the same stuff over and over again. This had absolutely nothing to do with difficulty. "Modern" games got rid of timesinks, while doing little about difficulty.
There are/were exceptions (not without their own shortcomings, e.g. EvE, pre-f2p Tera, Neocron), but few and far between.
Why do people forget this? There was nothing difficult about "old school" they were just immense time sinks. "oh, so you cant put in 12 hours a day? Loser"
If games get real difficulty im all for it, if people want "old school", hell no, theres quite a good reason those arent made any more (and why almost everyone quit those and dont play em any more)
I have one serious issue with this article.. Both Chris and Bill are looking at MMO's as being all about combat.. I don't play MMO's for the combat.. If I wanted to focus on combat games I'd go play Diablo, Call of Duty or Mortal Kombat.. Did it occur to Chris and Bill that the challenge for some is the managing of their characters? Why not focus on cerebral skills and challenges instead of twitch action combat? Something to think about
Keep in mind thata lot of difficulty in the past was - in many cases - equivalent to mindless timesink and repeting the same stuff over and over again. This had absolutely nothing to do with difficulty. "Modern" games got rid of timesinks, while doing little about difficulty.
There are/were exceptions (not without their own shortcomings, e.g. EvE, pre-f2p Tera, Neocron), but few and far between.
Why do people forget this? There was nothing difficult about "old school" they were just immense time sinks. "oh, so you cant put in 12 hours a day? Loser"
If games get real difficulty im all for it, if people want "old school", hell no, theres quite a good reason those arent made any more (and why almost everyone quit those and dont play em any more)
Depends on how you define difficulty. Mechanics were not super complex. Yes there was a lot of crap that was just plain tedious. However playing as a squishy character like a rogue in vanilla WoW, I had to be pretty careful about pulls when out soloing in the world, and I actually had to *gasp* think about things instead of run, smash! run, smash! I didn't find that particularly tedious I actually found it interesting that I actually had to think about what I was going to do, and I actually had a chance to die if I wasn't careful and aware of my surroundings, even if the mechanics of my attacks were pretty easy. Also in vanilla WoW there were class quests that had to be soloed and did require quite a bit of skill in some cases. I doubt 90% of the hunters playing today could finish that quest without putting in a significant amount of practice into things like kiting.
Originally posted by Rydeson I have one serious issue with this article.. Both Chris and Bill are looking at MMO's as being all about combat.. I don't play MMO's for the combat.. If I wanted to focus on combat games I'd go play Diablo, Call of Duty or Mortal Kombat.. Did it occur to Chris and Bill that the challenge for some is the managing of their characters? Why not focus on cerebral skills and challenges instead of twitch action combat? Something to think about
Agreed. Thinks like, how do I approach this situation. Paying attention to your surroundings. Deep character building systems where you have to actually think about things like synergy and where to spend points, tradeoffs, sacrifice.
point and click was never hard.mmo wasn`t about skillbase was more about player communication and organization over the ts software with great reward for everyone (pve boss loot)
take that pk karma option (open pvp) from lineage 2 (first and second chronicle), make all those mmo out there with perma death without respawn option and they will become hard (people gonna think twice before they will start boss with 1 item reward (loot) or if they gonna start kill someone else). imagine raid killing a boss with 1,2 rewards and 2 teammates lost forever.
Hey there, I've been playing MMO's for like 15 years now, and I must say that the pace and difficulty of the new MMO's S-U-C-K. Every noob can hit max lvl and get equipment in 1 day after hitting elder game. I remember the time in WoW for example where I stood on my rogue 2 months in blues because things wouldn't drop in a Molten Core / BWL raid that lasted 4-5 hours. OFC now it's easy, even PVP ... to get High Warlord you needed what.... 1 month of daily pvp-ing and only a certain percentage reached that high rank. Now games have become really casual, play a day or two and in one week you can catch up with the others in terms of equipment and things like that.
One first, I don't presume EQ-Era MMOs as "difficult". Most it was just tedious and you just can`t bring that back.
EQ wasn't tedious, it had some of the best dungeons to date, traps, invisible bridges, dungeons within dungeons and so on. Yes you rested and you had grinding but that doesn't make the game tedious.
Did you actually play the game, not try it but play the game to top level, nope i don't think you did.
But it can still be more difficult. Take Skyrim VS The Elder Scrolls Online. Both are by and large not difficult as in an action game. Though I haven`t played TESO, I will assume that for now. So, the difficulty is Skyrim are traps, are tough bosses, and enemies jumping at your from dark corners. Are sometimes many of them. That is why Skyrim, despite being a RPG without challanging action combat was difficult at times, and TESO is not. TESO, like most MMOs, has NO difficult traps. No difficult boss mobs besides giving them 200 times as much health and letting them do 10 times as much damage. That`s not difficult. That`s just tedious.
I agree with your TESO summary but Skyrim wasn't hard at all, seriously go play Dark Souls or Dragon Dogma on hard mode.
One thing I`d want to see is the return of dangerous dungeons, so we can keep the open surface world moderate in difficulty, but for advanced difficulty you could roam into dungeons. And you can add a few dangerous zones. Like Nektolous Forest. Hell, I recall Nektulous Forest in Everquest 2 in the early days, and and it was a DAMN DANGEROUS zone! I cursed it often, but when I finally managed to cross the Nek Forest the first time, I felt like I had actually ACCOMPLISHED something. I know a game can`t be like that everywhere. But a MMO has to have dangerous zones as well, but zones you can still do solo.
Yeah i agree with your early EQ2 summary but EQ was just as difficult crossing some zones. Dark Soul dungeons in MMO's is what is needed.
And traps. Can we pls make traps dangerous again? I recall how I went into Neverwinter-Dungeons as Thief, hoping to sneak ahead and disarm traps and we would slowly explore cool and deadly dungeons, as I knew it from D&D the Pen and Paper evening. Oh NOTHING could have been further from the reality! The groups RAN through the dungeons, as if there was a price for fastness! They just WALZED over the traps, because they made WAAAY too less damage. And want those traps to be near deadly so people are again AFRAID in dungeons! When I look at videos from TESO or what, I feel just let down how fast people can run through dungeons, and it just feels wrong. A dungeon should not be like a walk through a shopping mall! That just cheapens the experience! Let the death penality be minor, so it doesn`t harm people overmuch, but let dungeons and some areas be dangerous again.
That's why Vanguard and EQ have the best dungeons in any mmo to date, some take days to do. Now we get 2-3 hour dungeons like you have in games like GW2. Some dungeons in Vanguard take days and i'm not talking about raiding dungeons but group dungeons.
Perhaps you have been playing the wrong games, these types of games have never gone away. Problem is people choose to play the easy mmo's.
point and click was never hard.mmo wasn`t about skillbase was more about player communication and organization over the ts software with great reward for everyone (pve boss loot)
take that pk karma option (open pvp) from lineage 2 (first and second chronicle), make all those mmo out there with perma death without respawn option and they will become hard (people gonna think twice before they will start boss with 1 item reward (loot) or if they gonna start kill someone else). imagine raid killing a boss with 1,2 rewards and 2 teammates lost forever.
People are going to think twice before buying a game like that or at least resubing. The first time they die do to some family member refocusing their attention away from the or a call from the boss that can not wait and they will move on just like i would.
That is an unforgiving game mechanic that I would never put time into.
Well actually if there was no lvling and all i had to do is a few dungeons to get regeared i might just see what makes the game fun. LvLing was never fun for me. Being left behind in lvls and segregated is not fun for anyone that is why mmo's aren't really mmo's till max lvl and till then it is just a 1 player experience for the most part. LvLing needs to go imo. Find some other time sink that makes sense in an mmo setting. More minecraft less lvling.
I do like the team work but I also need a feeling of personal worth as my skill increases. Tab targeting does not leave room to get better and I feel less like I can get any better. I don't like playing just to grind. I need to cultivate some kind of ability that pays off at some point. I want to feel like I can teach people something and help them.
No one needs to get better at tab targeting and no amount of perma death is going to change that.
If the leveling experience is too long, or if the endgame content is too hard, it becomes "grindy". If leveling and endgame are easy, then it's a faceroll. By today's standard FFXI would be considered a grindy game, the WoW clones are considered to be a faceroll. FFXI had xp debt, progression was brutal and competitive. After BC, WoW became carebear mode.
If the players themselves can't figure out what they want in the mmo genre, don't expect the devs to know either.
Originally posted by jbombard When you make death penalties too severe and then couple that with content that is too difficult you run the risk of frustrating the player.
(Just quoting the part I wanted to address)
This frustration in the past is something that encouraged grouping- playing solo was supposed to be harder and in some cases impossible.
Comments
I know you're personally not trying to do these things, but your post makes it sound like driving people away is inherently a bad thing. I take issue with that, if it is indeed your position.
No, I was agreeing that a decision to do so by a game might do that to those who dislike harsh death penalties. I come from games that had them so I'm neutral to it and would adapt if the game I play had it.
Seeing as many of us gamers are already polarized to different likes and playstyles, I find this a good thing as it tells devs not to try to put everyone under the same tent trying to please everyone.
I agree with this too. I would love to see more niche games that appeal to a more specific kind of player. I think the reason why we don't is basically money. Games require a lot of money to make these days, and people demand more and more on the graphics side of things etc... etc... etc... , making a niche game can be scary because if the niche you are targeting turns out to be a lot smaller than you estimated or you miss the mark it can kill a game company. It is kind of all your chicks in one basket vs. lots of baskets kind of thing.
Well the genre used to be a lot smaller than it is now. So I find it hard to believe that it needs to grow in order to survive. I agree that it's about money, I just don't agree that mmos require this much money. I don't need super top tier AAA graphics and polish. I just want a good game.
I think there is a lot more overhead to keep up with increased player expectations. Personally I don't need cutting edge graphics either if the game is fun. I still play a lot of old games. However you will find there are features used to sell a game and those features aren't necessarily the same features that keep people playing. Graphics is one of those. It can be a big factor in why someone first looks at a game, but not necessarily why they choose to play it or continue to play it. But I completely agree, I wish more developers focused their limited funds on gameplay and a focused niche of players. I can understand why that is a scary proposition though.
One first, I don't presume EQ-Era MMOs as "difficult". Most it was just tedious and you just can`t bring that back.
That out of the way: it depends WHAT you see as difficult.
You see, I am a RPG gamer. Meaning: I love it that my characters are only as strong as THEIR skills, not MY skills, because to be blunt, I am a dork. I have slow reactions, always had always will have. So while I enjoy a bit more action-y combat to get away from the stale Everquest/WoW combat of being fronzen to the ground and fight standing still, I have close to no reaction and coordination skill.
I prefer my characters, as is the case in classic Role Playing Games, to be defined by their stats and skills. Not by my reaction quickness. Simply because I have none and it rules me out of games.
But it can still be more difficult. Take Skyrim VS The Elder Scrolls Online. Both are by and large not difficult as in an action game. Though I haven`t played TESO, I will assume that for now. So, the difficulty is Skyrim are traps, are tough bosses, and enemies jumping at your from dark corners. Are sometimes many of them. That is why Skyrim, despite being a RPG without challanging action combat was difficult at times, and TESO is not. TESO, like most MMOs, has NO difficult traps. No difficult boss mobs besides giving them 200 times as much health and letting them do 10 times as much damage. That`s not difficult. That`s just tedious.
One thing I`d want to see is the return of dangerous dungeons, so we can keep the open surface world moderate in difficulty, but for advanced difficulty you could roam into dungeons. And you can add a few dangerous zones. Like Nektolous Forest. Hell, I recall Nektulous Forest in Everquest 2 in the early days, and and it was a DAMN DANGEROUS zone! I cursed it often, but when I finally managed to cross the Nek Forest the first time, I felt like I had actually ACCOMPLISHED something. I know a game can`t be like that everywhere. But a MMO has to have dangerous zones as well, but zones you can still do solo.
And traps. Can we pls make traps dangerous again? I recall how I went into Neverwinter-Dungeons as Thief, hoping to sneak ahead and disarm traps and we would slowly explore cool and deadly dungeons, as I knew it from D&D the Pen and Paper evening. Oh NOTHING could have been further from the reality! The groups RAN through the dungeons, as if there was a price for fastness! They just WALZED over the traps, because they made WAAAY too less damage. And want those traps to be near deadly so people are again AFRAID in dungeons! When I look at videos from TESO or what, I feel just let down how fast people can run through dungeons, and it just feels wrong. A dungeon should not be like a walk through a shopping mall! That just cheapens the experience! Let the death penality be minor, so it doesn`t harm people overmuch, but let dungeons and some areas be dangerous again.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
MMOs have become a lot easier over time. UO was hard because you had to look for mountains to mine and not nodes just strewn about the place. You also had the chance of being killed and loosing all your equipment to monsters or players. The monster back when I played use to take items as well.
In EQ the raid zones would take a week to complete and would require team work to do it. The monks and rogues would go out and pull the monsters back to a safe spot. Then the whole group could move forwards. Now its enter a room and fight a boss, you can't leave that room till the fight ends or you die.
Most dungeons you can bypass the trash mobs and go straight for the boss to kill it and get the big shiny loot at the end. This makes dungeons a trivial matter and hardly worth the time. There is never any thought to dungeons anymore. The last real mmo that had difficult dungeons was Age of Conan that forced you to fight your way through to the end.
Even in single player RPGs dungeons now are easy compared to Baldurs Gate and Dragon Age Origins.
Crafting in most mmo's is also a pointless task and is just a money sink. The only mmos that has decent crafting is Eve Online, UO, SWG, Vangaurd and the old SWG (pre NGE). Other than that in all the other mmo's there is no real need to craft.
MMO's today are far to casual and gratification orientated. WoW has done this to the market and now we suffer because of it as developers think this is what the hardcore mmo player wants. Thankfully though this train of thought is slowly being halted and turned around and we are now starting to see a new wave in design coming to mmo's.
Not going to take anything away from WoW it was a decent game and did many things right it also brought a lot of people to the MMO genre. It has been a prisoner of its own success though and developers have tried to emulate it. This is its only failing.
If dungeons were are deadly as Baldus Gate and Icewind Dale RPG's and crafting once again has a real meaning behind it like in UO with full looting rights in pvp as well. Then the genre would be heading back on track.
I really miss dangerous dungeons too. The problem with traps and MMORPGs tends to be that they are fun for the thief, but not a whole lot of fun for everybody sitting there waiting for the thief. In Pen and Paper it can go by fairly fast because the DM just has to say what happened, in an online game everyone actually has to sit there for an extended period of time waiting. That is one of the great things about P&P, the variable speed, the DM can speed up and skip over unimportant bits(like saying you walk for 2 days instead of describing every step of the entire journey) and then slow down the pace for the important/interesting bits. The closest thing we have to traps now are "elevators of doom" lol. I am sure they could come up with something if they set their minds to it though.
How I would love to find a mmo to challenge me... It seems that today all you have to do is log int to be given an epic item of some describtion that you have not worked for.
Non online game do not have this problem as you can change the difficulty setting to your liking and even download mods to make it even more challenging for you which is something I find myself doing more often.
But with mmo's you are are forced to play by the developeres rule set which is all to often easy mode by far.
For one example lets look at leveling a character to maximum level. When the large mmo's first hit the scene it took a monumental effort to achieve maximum level and that followed a real sense of accomplishment when finally hitting top level on your toon. . .But nowadays if you do not hit maximum level within a week then something must be broken within the game. Do not even get me started on experience boosting potions, resting experience and items that boost your experience.....Help.
Does anyone posting here actually believe MMOs today are as hard as they used to be?
"They don’t want us to leave because they ask us to try hard." That's been the design philosophy since WoW and it has only got worse and still is heading in that direction.
It does not matter if you think it was more grind or more skills, old MMOs were harder than the ones today.
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
Why do people forget this? There was nothing difficult about "old school" they were just immense time sinks. "oh, so you cant put in 12 hours a day? Loser"
If games get real difficulty im all for it, if people want "old school", hell no, theres quite a good reason those arent made any more (and why almost everyone quit those and dont play em any more)
Depends on how you define difficulty. Mechanics were not super complex. Yes there was a lot of crap that was just plain tedious. However playing as a squishy character like a rogue in vanilla WoW, I had to be pretty careful about pulls when out soloing in the world, and I actually had to *gasp* think about things instead of run, smash! run, smash! I didn't find that particularly tedious I actually found it interesting that I actually had to think about what I was going to do, and I actually had a chance to die if I wasn't careful and aware of my surroundings, even if the mechanics of my attacks were pretty easy. Also in vanilla WoW there were class quests that had to be soloed and did require quite a bit of skill in some cases. I doubt 90% of the hunters playing today could finish that quest without putting in a significant amount of practice into things like kiting.
Agreed. Thinks like, how do I approach this situation. Paying attention to your surroundings. Deep character building systems where you have to actually think about things like synergy and where to spend points, tradeoffs, sacrifice.
point and click was never hard.mmo wasn`t about skillbase was more about player communication and organization over the ts software with great reward for everyone (pve boss loot)
take that pk karma option (open pvp) from lineage 2 (first and second chronicle), make all those mmo out there with perma death without respawn option and they will become hard (people gonna think twice before they will start boss with 1 item reward (loot) or if they gonna start kill someone else). imagine raid killing a boss with 1,2 rewards and 2 teammates lost forever.
Hey there, I've been playing MMO's for like 15 years now, and I must say that the pace and difficulty of the new MMO's S-U-C-K. Every noob can hit max lvl and get equipment in 1 day after hitting elder game. I remember the time in WoW for example where I stood on my rogue 2 months in blues because things wouldn't drop in a Molten Core / BWL raid that lasted 4-5 hours. OFC now it's easy, even PVP ... to get High Warlord you needed what.... 1 month of daily pvp-ing and only a certain percentage reached that high rank. Now games have become really casual, play a day or two and in one week you can catch up with the others in terms of equipment and things like that.
Perhaps you have been playing the wrong games, these types of games have never gone away. Problem is people choose to play the easy mmo's.
People are going to think twice before buying a game like that or at least resubing. The first time they die do to some family member refocusing their attention away from the or a call from the boss that can not wait and they will move on just like i would.
That is an unforgiving game mechanic that I would never put time into.
Well actually if there was no lvling and all i had to do is a few dungeons to get regeared i might just see what makes the game fun. LvLing was never fun for me. Being left behind in lvls and segregated is not fun for anyone that is why mmo's aren't really mmo's till max lvl and till then it is just a 1 player experience for the most part. LvLing needs to go imo. Find some other time sink that makes sense in an mmo setting. More minecraft less lvling.
I do like the team work but I also need a feeling of personal worth as my skill increases. Tab targeting does not leave room to get better and I feel less like I can get any better. I don't like playing just to grind. I need to cultivate some kind of ability that pays off at some point. I want to feel like I can teach people something and help them.
No one needs to get better at tab targeting and no amount of perma death is going to change that.
If the leveling experience is too long, or if the endgame content is too hard, it becomes "grindy". If leveling and endgame are easy, then it's a faceroll. By today's standard FFXI would be considered a grindy game, the WoW clones are considered to be a faceroll. FFXI had xp debt, progression was brutal and competitive. After BC, WoW became carebear mode.
If the players themselves can't figure out what they want in the mmo genre, don't expect the devs to know either.
(Just quoting the part I wanted to address)
This frustration in the past is something that encouraged grouping- playing solo was supposed to be harder and in some cases impossible.