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Why does every MMO try and hold my hand as if I were a child?
Razeekster
Member UncommonPosts: 2,591
It's pretty sad that I find Vanguard: Saga of Heroes (it's a great game and I would suggest it to anyone looking for a different type of themepark), a themepark MMO created quite a while ago to be better than any other themepark out in the current market, simply because I am tired of MMOs being so obnoxiously easy. You're a winner no matter what! Yes, people play MMOs for fun so horrid death penalties are probably not the answer, but taking away a bit of exp. for dying isn't that big of a deal so I don't see why when there is just a bit of punishment in an MMO people seem to have massive freak outs and say things like 'this game is gonna fail so hard!"
It took me a good three days to wrap my head around Diplomacy in Vanguard because no one could explain it to me very well, but several explanations later and lots of practicing and testing of cards, and I finally managed to figure it out. To me, that was extremely satisfying. My hand wasn't held and I had to think for myself and figure stuff out.
Everyone asks for something different from WoW easy-mode and when they get it they cry like little babies. Make up your mind people. It's either going to be a game made for adults with some consequences and no hand-holding to make it that much more satisfying in the end, or you can go play some more WoW type MMOs where everything is just handed to you on a big ol' silver platter. I'm sure that's super satisfying in the self achievement department.
Smile
Comments
I'm with ya. I can't stand the degree of hand-holding in games these days. It's actually insulting how patronizing developers/designers have become to their players.
The latest I've played that really took it to extremes was FFXIV. Completing quests in that game require no more than this:
1. Run up to the floating quest icon. Doesn't matter who the NPC is, what they do, what they need or why they need it. None of that is relevant or important at all to what you'll be doing.
2. Speed-click through quest dialog (if necessary) and accept quest.
3. Run to quest area which is marked on the map(s) and is pointed out via markers on the min-map/compass.
4. Look for the floating quest icons. Those are your targets. Doesn't matter what the creatures are, what they're doing or why you're killing them. Just kill them.
5. Return to floating quest icon... again, doesn't matter who the NPC is... Click on it and accept your reward.
6. Wash, rinse, repeat.
I don't know if increased hand-holding is the cause or effect, but I will tell you that, even in MMOs with ample hand-holding - where everything is pointed out and spelled out for you, to the point where you don't even have to read the quest dialog at all to be able to complete the task - I've still seen people asking in shout/general for help on where to find something. Multiple times.
In short, many people's attention spans can be measured in seconds these days. If what they need to do requires more time than that to figure out, they're already lost.
Why their attention spans are so short can vary, but one reason I've notice (per the statements/complaints by various players) is due to the way they perceive the game. To them MMOs = Race To End Game and Collect Loot. Anything that stands between them and either of those two things is an inconvenience to be rushed through ASAFP. MMOs for those people are 99.9% Destination, with the .1% being that "annoying leveling up bit".
Also consider how many people will argue that "End game is where the real game starts". Think about that. These people believe the ~10% of the game that comes at the very end is "the real game", while the other 90% before it is useless. That pretty much says it all.
So, for them, all the hand-holding is a godsend, because it means they can literally just bounce around the map and clean up without ever having to stop and think of what they have to do or where they have to go.
As an aside.. I recently checked out WoW again, since Pandaria was on sale and I figured 'why not?'. Ironically, WoW actually has less hand-holding than FFXIV does, or several other newer MMO's I've played.
Now, if you'd like a game that has minimal hand-holding, that will seriously challenge you and that treats you like an intelligent adult, check out The Secret World. The puzzles and such in that game will definitely scratch that itch.
I am with you OP,it is the very one thing that i look for in a new game.It might be a past time expected to be played by young kids,but i am quite certain there is a large number of older gamer's as well that do not want hand holding.
It really shows how little developers think for themselves,someone started the yellow markers over npc heads and now everyone is copying that idea.It may have been SOE,not really sure.
I played very old rpg's and there was no such thing and i had a lot fo fun as i believe others did as well.Games like Might N MAgic and Wizardy,there were no yellow markers or markers on maps to tell you exactly where to go.
When i played FFXI,you had to actually LISTEN and pay attention to the quest,otherwise you were stuck big time,no hand holding what so ever to help you out.Not only did you have to listen,you had to think,MANY quests were not laid out in simply fashion,it involved learning your entire surroundings and talking to other NPC's,just as you would in real life.
Sadly even my beloved Square Enix dropped down in standards and catered to EASIER and hand holding,even though you still have to think and don't see yellow markers in FFXI.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Hypocrites.
You will play all those games regardless you say in this forum or anywhere else.
Hype will always get to you and the fact stays the same as long as I live - everyone will always come back to these kind of games. Period.
/end
Firstly you've got to know where to find the difficulty in games like WOW, it's certainly not in the main content designed for leveling. Even TOR has it, it's just not in the way of everyday casual progression. They're games made for everyone you have to consider that.
I've never looked at XP loss as anything more than a device to string players along (sub longer). Perma Death, combat fatigue/wounds and corpse looting at least make some sense. XP loss and level loss were poorly used devices IMO.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Re the Hypocrites post: Lol :P
Seriously, some are more inclined to addiction than others.
Why? Because Blizzard did a study and found the biggest problem with retaining player was that they quit before level 10 and thought the game was too hard.
Contrary to common belief on these forums developers are not stupid. The endgame is where the difficulty can be found - or where the grind can be found - that part of the game is what keeps players hooked in long term. Easy to play but hard to master - that's the mantra that these games are suppose to use - and for the most part they actually do it.
Yeah that's not good at all for the majority of gamers nowadays. That'd be a huge waste of time, and gaming is already a waste of time. Sure you can pass the lack of concise instructions about a game's feature as a "feature" in of itself, but to most that'd be like buying a software, SDK, hardware, appliances, or car without the user manual (or a very lacking manual). Knock yourself out figuring things for yourself.
I disagree.
Permadeath is not why most players play these games and it's a very small group of people who would be interested. And for the record I "could" be interested if done well.
looting? Seriously? From what I see looting is a slap on the hand. As many people who are "pro-looting" like to point out, the games designed around looting are less gear dependent so essentially anything that is looted can usually be replaced quite easily.
as it just so happens, that is exactly what happened to me in my small stint with dark fall. Was killed and looted and I ran back to my vault and geared up from the copious amounts of gear that I put in there and that was that.
I prefer xp loss. Vanguard has it and Lineage 2 has it and I never fought so hard as when I knew I was going to die and lose my progression.
Something has to have worth and has to be something that you are not willing to lose to make it important.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Not true my friend, the last batch of new games I have learned to try betas and free trials before buying. and now if i log in and the first thing i see is a npc with a shinny thing above his head for quest i log out and uninstall. them days are done for me.
I still don't see the point of the mechanic, what does it represent? There are plenty of forms of meaningful loss that don't include wiping away past progression (SWG's item decay as an example). It's largely a PVE focused device for games that are largely PVE based (which makes it make even less sense to me to be used in L2) . Then again L2 was a grinders game..
The most practical reason I can see the original EQ and games like it using it, is that the bulk of the game is in the adventure. The most meaningful thing in the game is achieving that next level (By design) during your long crawl to cap. When that's the chief mechanic that keeps people playing, what better way to keep them playing than taking those levels away. as well as progression toward them?
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
This thread and mainly this part has always bothered me. All content before endgame is usually too easy. No risk of dying at all, no sense of wonder anymore, just kill X of Y in location Z. Every 2 levels the contents of these variables change.
If the real game starts at endgame, then maybe you should throw me in endgame after character creation. Why is 90% of your game throwaway content? You spend 20-60 hours getting to max level. Why should this be boring content? This is where you are supposed to convince me to play your game, yet when I use the leveling as a reason not to, people defend the game saying it doesn't start until max level.
I don't understand when or why things took a turn for the worse. Early dungeons used to be tough, now it's a race and if anyone falls under 50% health, or you fail to complete it in 20 minutes, the group is considered a failure. Leveling used to be interesting, now I'm just clicking the same 3 buttons over and over and over because "no really you must keep playing it gets better at level X!"
Take any MMO released over the past 3 years or so. Grab every single mob wondering around in the world. Triple its damage, leave the rest intact. Result: Still too easy, you still never die.
It just boggles the mind thinking of how they playtest content like this. Does anyone at all get excited running through area after area obliterating anything that stands in their way? Is it really fun that 90% of the game zones will be visited once during leveling, and then never again once you move past it?
Boohoo
It is actually explained in-game and there's a tutorial (that you can repeat as many times as you want) for it and everything, but it still takes some figuring out. I realize though that most gamers just want to rush in head first without really having to think. The effort on the brain to think in a game would probably just be too much for most
Smile
I think that was the biggest change that I saw introduced with WOW, and the change was both to the industry and to WOW itself. At release, the first 7 or 8 levels got tuned down significantly over the first six months. Sarkoth the scorpid was kicking newb ass on the horde side, and he was only being outdone by that cave full of stuff at the end of Valley of Trials with the pool of water and the boss-like encounter on the ledge over it. On the alliance side, humans were getting their asses kicked by cats and other manners of small creatures.
The levels, content and layout of the newb areas - and many successive areas over time - had changed over the course of the first 6-12 months to make them easier to traverse, give them clearer paths, and ease up on the types or density of the mobs. Since then many MMOs have the player gain the first couple of levels in an insulated tutorial and then transition them slowly to harder gameplay for the next 20 or 30 levels.
Considering the design of modern MMOs and the way in which people are playing them, it seems that the First 15 Minutes of an MMO should consist of:
Would you like to watch the intro first?
Would you like to do the tutorial?
What level would you like to start at?
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Hand holding is to help reduce stress on the games support staff. I mean, do you have any idea how many people submit tickets to ask game support 'how do I do this?' or 'where is this quest item?'. Those support representatives should be solving technical issues... not walking someone through quests or digging through someone's inventory to show them where the quest item is or where on the map they need to go to do 'x' or 'y'.
Or, worse yet, the countless number of lazy people that spam public channels 'how do I?' or 'where is this quest item?'.
If people would simply 1) have a sense of adventure or 2) open a browser, and enter their question in Google.... but, no, they won't and don't have time for that.
So, I'm all for 'community' and helping people. But I'd rather help those that try to help themselves first.
...
So, dev's put in a ton of 'hand-holding' features to help guide people through things. Spend 10-15 minutes in a public channel on nearly any MMO and you'll understand why they had to do this, tbh.
Thing is - at least in my experience reading forums - the people who talk about "end game being the real game" are the same ones complaining that everything before that is "boring filler". They're the ones whom believe the end game is the only reason to be playing, and it's the only part of the game they're interested in.
The claim that the game prior to level cap is too easy is a dubious one anyway, and is often a self-inflicted problem. It's another aspect of the problem which has little to do with the content, and everything to do with the way many players approach it.
Consider this...
If you go just by the complaints made on forums like these, most (if not all) of the people griping about the pre-end game content being "too easy" are the same ones going out of their way to make it so.
You can see the process at work in so many message threads. People who are just starting out create posts wanting to know what level cap is, what the end-game is like, what's the fastest and easiest way to get there, what's the optimal builds, etc. etc. They're basically attempting to dumb down the game for themselves before they've even started, or have any grasp on what the game is like. They haven't even started any of the content yet, and they're already looking for ways to race through it.
I've found in most cases that the people complaining about "pre-end game content being too easy" have not even experienced most of it - by their own design. They make every effort to try and skip past it as quickly as possible, because end game is all they care about. There are people out there who are so impatient that they'll outright buy a character that someone else has played, allowing them to skip all of it altogether.
Then they come to forums and complain about a lack of challenging content. They blame it all on the devs, while never considering their approach to the game as being the problem. Point out various examples of more challenging content to them, and a common response will be how the xp or item rewards aren't worth it, or how nothing before end-game matters. I've seen the argument so many times that content which doesn't help you level faster - or reward good gear - "isn't worth doing".
Then there's the case of MMOs that actually do have challenging content. Take The Secret World. A lot of the content in that game is genuinely difficult. Not "time sink" difficult. I mean that it provides both physical and mental challenges which are not in any way "dumbed down". What have many people done in response? Well, some go to the forums complaining that it's too difficult and needs to be made easier, with more clues in-game (such as quest markers). Others go straight to fan sites, follow cookie-cutter character templates and solution guides for every mission, and then go to forums saying "the game isn't challenging". -facepalm-
It's like doing an advanced cross-word puzzle, skipping to the back of the book for the answers, filling them in, and then saying "These crossword puzzles are too easy". It's completely disingenuous.
I really could go on with the examples. But the point being made here is that in many cases, the players are their own worst enemies.
This whole thing plays into the impatience/short attention span aspect of why there's so much hand-holding. Players, in large numbers, keep sending the message that they either can't handle anything more involved, or don't want to.
Are the devs to blame? Sure. They could ignore the complaints about "too difficult" and make these games more challenging. However, at that point, it's on the players to meet that challenge and not find every means possible to dumb it down "so they can get to end-game faster".
It's not a matter of having time or not. It's a matter of playstyle.
To point #1, some people are playing to unlock the next chapter of the story. This is one of the reasons that the 'easy' difficulty setting exists in RPGs. The player is walking the character through a story. In that scenario, that player isn't playing to get to the next character level, they are playing to get to experience the next chapter of the story. The character level is not only incidental for them, but it's a very static aspect of the game as it is simply scaling with the content and not really changing in difficulty or content. When something blocks that user from proceeding to the next part of the story, it's akin to having the pages of the next chapter of one's book stuck together. It's not a challenge; it is an annoyance.
To point #2, you have to remember you are a very different beast from the majority of gamers. Most gamers aren't going to the web for answers because that's an indication of a flawed or bad game to them. Actually, even the crowd here can't be arsed to research something they are interested in, otherwise you wouldn't have so many "y u play girl chars isnt that weird to u?" or any number of the other monthly repeat posts we get here. It doesn't make a difference that the internet is an amazing research tool. People, in general, either do not want to or do not know how to research something even if it is of importance to them. However, the main factor is really that if a user has to go beyond their program (games or business) to figure out how to use it, they generally consider it either a poorly designed program or they move to one that they can figure out without external resources.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
You obviously haven't played Age Of Wulin/Wushu or Wurm Online.
I agree withn your take on Vanguard as well.
I agree with the open poster. Games are too easy nowadays, for an example the leveling grind. I love when you have to be careful in the zones so that you don't get too much aggro and I love when a death gives some sort of penalty. But we are all different. I remember when I played WOW we had a few people playing a MMO for the first or second time and they had problems in one of the earliest zones with boars. They were cursing in the chat that they died and hated their class etc. I couldn't believe it. The rest of us were pretty much racing through the content to get to max level the quickest. Which was easy because everything was marked on the map. Go there, do that, get experience.
I guess that that is why I love PvP because you never know what you will face.
Same goes with crafting. It's almost like they want everyone to reach max in crafting. In some games they even force you to have x amount in crafting to be able to wear some pieces of gear. At the same time they don't want crafting to be too powerful because there are always people that don't want to craft. In the end crafting means nothing. I would love a craftingsystem that is hard to skill up in but when someone do they should be able to craft stuff that other player wants.
I love MMORPGs and will continue to play them but I hate how easy everything is. And it's not like I am trying to say that I am a wonderful player and it's easy because of that.
I remember when you had to read the quest text to be able to find what the quest wanted you to find. Now people are not reading the quest texts anymore. In fact they rather send out a question about quests in the general chat and so many times they get the answer " Read the quest text!".
General Chat is another thing I hate with games today but that is another story.
As i have said, if you choose to play the latest shiny which is more of the same then you have no one else to blame but yourselves.
Why are you not playing Age Of Wulin which has probably the best PVP since UO, Why are you not playing Wurm Online or any of the other mmo's that don't hold your hand?
Sometimes i wonder if threads like these are just attention seeking threads because their are games out there that have the type of systems the op claims to like.
In EVE, ship loss and looting has somewhat severe costs, in terms of time and effort it might take to replace your ship/cargo, and I've seen people loose billions of ISK in an instant representing perhaps months if not years of their efforts, so looting can be a quite significant deterrent depending on how it's implemented.
Besides the embarrassment of being listed on the killboards as the idiot who lost everything, one of the strongest deterrents in EVE actually.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Who said we aren't? I won't play AOW because the combat style is beyond my current abilities, just don't have the reflexes for action oriented combat, otherwise sounds like an interesting game.
I am however playing a freeshard of DAOC reset to 2003 ruleset, and there is very little hand holding there, penalties for dying, etc, and I'm having more fun the past 7 or 8 months than in the past 9 years, EVE not withstanding.
Many other posters here are playing titles such as Vangard, or nothing at all, due to the dearth of more challenging and well built titles.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I think you can strike a nice balance between risk and reward. If you're doing a mainstream game then you can't punish players too hard for playing the core content (like questing) but you can increase the risk in certain situations. Certain dungeons and battlegrounds could offer better rewards but be a lot riskier to play for example. You could make zones where the mobs are tougher and where if you die you lose your gear or some xp but if you succeed there you are rewarded with greater things, faster.
I bet you people would flock to these areas and not complain as long as there was an alternative for all the people who didn't want to put in the effort
Its the same reason why I am not playing EVE, it takes too long for me to get into the grove of the game. When a game is shown to be too difficult to master, you scare away potential customers.
I for one wants a Moderate Easy game with an Harsh punishment for failure. Like if you fail a quest, you are locked out from it and must continue down another quest line that is longer and more tedious. And the only exp you get are from quests that only unlocks skills not levels.
MMORPG is all about Ego stroking, before when achieving Max level was done in a few days, it used to take months of consistent playing, Leveling up was an achievement in itself. The requiem of the DING.
Now its just an obstacle to reach that max level to start playing.
Life is a Maze, so make sure you bring your GPS incase you get lost in it.