Well actually you have written - not spoken. I know you feel like you are imparting some great wisdom on us with this post. But its truly misguided. Let me let you in on a little secret - "quality of life" decisions DO NOT make or break your game.
Let's take your examples. LFG/LFR. Honestly I thought it hurt WoW too. But it was a big game before LFG and a big game AFTER LFG.
"Quest tracker" - once upon a time WoW was a really popular game and it didn't have the same kind of mapping and quest tracking it does now. After those features were added - it was STILL popular.
"See the content" This is the Blizzard mantra - and while I do agree its misguided - again its not gamebreaking. I think the BC model of guys who play more get to do more things is the smarter model. But its there game.
Would WoW be an amazing MMO if they removed all this stuff. Nope. It would be the same tab-target pseudo 3d scripted MMO it has always been. It's too bad because If what made a game good or bad came down to a few QOL decisions we could all rule out games very quickly.
Hey GW2 has a global AH and ESO doesn't! ESO is awesome.. It doesn't really work that way..
All the little things of convenience combined is what makes for a boring product in the end, at least for a certain type of gamer. Its not that each one of these features alone would have a major impact.
Although some do. RDF for example fundamentally changes the way players view dungeons - they are not parts of the world you go to to kill some monsters at - rather, they are instanced minigames you can repeat over and over. Now if all the tool did was finding a group, the impact wouldn't be so major, but add to that extra rewards (which in that specific game you used to have to pick up from an NPC before the tool was introduced) and instant teleportation (to the instance and back again), the impact becomes pretty huge.
Basing your argument of those features being fine on the fact World of Warcraft remained a big game after introducing them isn't exactly fair either by the way. The game is big because it is big. Population draws population. And while the population might stay high, it doesn't mean the same players kept on playing - the amount of players who started later than Vanilla surpassed the amount of those, who'd played the game nearly since release, already in WOTLK.
In the end, there is a greater audience for a game with all these convenience related features, but there's also a large amount of people who do not like them - the latter is the type of gamer the OP, I am guessing, would belong to.
Well if we talk about wow and how the "majory" ppl are those casuals that wants everything fast and now. If you just look subscriber the graphs. its just going down. Ppl just rush trough the end and then what? theres nothing to do and they switch to another game cause they dont give shit. Same goes with the hardcore players. They unsubscribe and wait till the next patch. Back in the days there was raids waiting for you after you finished the one that was the "end game", There it waits you, go and get there. To get my point in BC the first raid 2nd boss took about 18 days to kill. (im not so sure about the expansion) but then in cataclysm the whole CONTENT was cleared in 3 days. What happened? Imo the game should go harder and harder along the way to keep players excited. Not easier...
The game is just simply so easy now days. hell you can lvl up ur character without using any spell. just LFD and follow some1. Theres none, zero challenge in the game now. Tanks just pull the whole instances and dps nuke them down. No anymore tactics "sheep this one" "sap that one". Its just mindles RUSH. What you do with manabar below lvl 90 ? or even above that. What you do with the mage foodtablet anymore? just asking...
How is that good thing to let ppl just rush trough the game and let people skip some content? and yes it takes time to make alts and it sucks if your friend wants to start playing the game but thats a good thing. Imo its wrong if your guild needs some1 to roll X character and you say "i make it. wait couple days and we are good to go". You give so much more value and respect to your main character cause it rly tooked your time and effort to get where you are now.
I think it's highly arrogant to believe that your personal idea of good MMORPG is the only valid form that an MMORPG can take.
Much like the citrus fruit family, MMORPGs come in a wide variety of very similar flavours differentiated only by how much they make you screw up your face. Both literally and figuratively, some people like lemons more than oranges whilst others prefer oranges to lemons. Personally I prefer oranges to lemons, but that does not mean I go round having a go at all of the silly lemon folk that seem enjoy the oral (and guttural) BDSM of regularly consuming the citrus fruit family's equivalent to cheap gin. I'm sure we can all agree that assailing a person for their choice of citrus fruit would be a moronic gesture indeed.
The same sentiment applies to the various MMOs that people play. I may think most of them are rubbish, but I don't go round having a go at people for liking them. To each, as they say, their own.
Well here's the deal - if I'll just continue using your analogy: you may like oranges and I myself lemons. But lemons are no longer being produced.
Because the majority of consumers prefers oranges, the market has for some reason decided to only produce oranges. The production of lemons has been put a complete stop on. Nobody wants, for what ever reason, to touch the niche market which they could dominate if they delivered a high quality product.
Well to continue with that analogy, it costs the same amount to grow lemons of sufficient quality that it does for oranges. Market forces have decided, through metrics, research, meta-data, whatever, that there might not be a sufficent market for lemons to warrent the expendature.
Some people are experimenting with sub-clones of different lemons though, but so far, of the lemons released none have really been of a quality level that lemon enthusiesits widely accept.
Well if we talk about wow and how the "majory" ppl are those casuals that wants everything fast and now. If you just look subscriber the graphs. its just going down. Ppl just rush trough the end and then what? theres nothing to do and they switch to another game cause they dont give shit. Same goes with the hardcore players. They unsubscribe and wait till the next patch. Back in the days there was raids waiting for you after you finished the one that was the "end game", There it waits you, go and get there. To get my point in BC the first raid 2nd boss took about 18 days to kill. (im not so sure about the expansion) but then in cataclysm the whole CONTENT was cleared in 3 days. What happened? Imo the game should go harder and harder along the way to keep players excited. Not easier...
The game is just simply so easy now days. hell you can lvl up ur character without using any spell. just LFD and follow some1. Theres none, zero challenge in the game now. Tanks just pull the whole instances and dps nuke them down. No anymore tactics "sheep this one" "sap that one". Its just mindles RUSH. What you do with manabar below lvl 90 ? or even above that. What you do with the mage foodtablet anymore? just asking...
How is that good thing to let ppl just rush trough the game and let people skip some content? and yes it takes time to make alts and it sucks if your friend wants to start playing the game but thats a good thing. Imo its wrong if your guild needs some1 to roll X character and you say "i make it. wait couple days and we are good to go". You give so much more value and respect to your main character cause it rly tooked your time and effort to get where you are now.
Well, the gaming industry as a whole, is continuing to move away from the "forced" challenge model that had risen in the Arcade/NES days. The direction that they seem to be headed is the "optional" challenge. The achievements, like the raid metas in WoW, the hard mode raids. They provide the base experience open to all players while the "hardcore" need to take it upon themselves to go the extra mile and take the optional challenge. It seems to be that there is a subset of players who cant bring themselves to choose the hard path but would rather have it forced upon them and everyone else at the same time.
I'm not saying that MMOs do a great job with these options all the time, but thats the direction they are headed.
Well if we talk about wow and how the "majory" ppl are those casuals that wants everything fast and now. If you just look subscriber the graphs. its just going down. Ppl just rush trough the end and then what? theres nothing to do and they switch to another game cause they dont give shit. Same goes with the hardcore players. They unsubscribe and wait till the next patch. Back in the days there was raids waiting for you after you finished the one that was the "end game", There it waits you, go and get there. To get my point in BC the first raid 2nd boss took about 18 days to kill. (im not so sure about the expansion) but then in cataclysm the whole CONTENT was cleared in 3 days. What happened? Imo the game should go harder and harder along the way to keep players excited. Not easier...
The game is just simply so easy now days. hell you can lvl up ur character without using any spell. just LFD and follow some1. Theres none, zero challenge in the game now. Tanks just pull the whole instances and dps nuke them down. No anymore tactics "sheep this one" "sap that one". Its just mindles RUSH. What you do with manabar below lvl 90 ? or even above that. What you do with the mage foodtablet anymore? just asking...
How is that good thing to let ppl just rush trough the game and let people skip some content? and yes it takes time to make alts and it sucks if your friend wants to start playing the game but thats a good thing. Imo its wrong if your guild needs some1 to roll X character and you say "i make it. wait couple days and we are good to go". You give so much more value and respect to your main character cause it rly tooked your time and effort to get where you are now.
Well, the gaming industry as a whole, is continuing to move away from the "forced" challenge model that had risen in the Arcade/NES days. The direction that they seem to be headed is the "optional" challenge. The achievements, like the raid metas in WoW, the hard mode raids. They provide the base experience open to all players while the "hardcore" need to take it upon themselves to go the extra mile and take the optional challenge. It seems to be that there is a subset of players who cant bring themselves to choose the hard path but would rather have it forced upon them and everyone else at the same time.
I'm not saying that MMOs do a great job with these options all the time, but thats the direction they are headed.
And i dont get it why ALL new mmo:s follow this disgusting easy rush "here take my hand and il lead the way into the end" system.
And i dont get it why ALL new mmo:s follow this disgusting easy rush "here take my hand and il lead the way into the end" system.
Part of it, Im sure, is the developer's struggle to keep people interested in a game, when players have a new MMO or 2 coming out, seemingly, every 6 months, as well as a host of other games to go to that have already been released. To slow, people lose interest (heck I remember those slow days, hours of camping dervishes in North Desert of Ro, and the Paludal Caverns in EQ), to fast people burn through all the content and get bored. They seem to be favoring the speed side, but no one have found the perfect balance yet.
First of all. you "bu..bu..but i dont have time to play the game" type ppl. stop whining about the games if they are too hard or take too much of your time...I have an answer of that. DONT_PLAY_THE_FUCKING_GAME_THEN. There are soooo many games that dont require that much of your time. I dont have that much time too. But i dont QQ about it. I love the adventure feeling that games used to have and when they were hard..but thats gone too.
Quest Tracker:
Back in the days ppl needed to figure out by reading the Qtext or asking some1 where to do the quests. Now days you just follow arrow or check in the map where to go. The game basicly hold your hands and lead the way trough the game. I think this is stupid and boring. Why take away one social aspect and the adventure of questing and make it EASY?
LFG/LFR: 1. This is the cancer of mmo. This _thing_ takes so much out of the game. Again... social aspect: I tought mmo games are social but no...not now days. The crossrealm shit. Once the instance is done you will never see those guys again. Adventure: ???...Remember when you needed to run and things happened when you were heading to the dungeon? Imo this is one part of the World PVP. But NOPE not anymore. just teleport us instantly in the dungeons so we dont need to do shit.
2. Ppl who are not putting effort or time into the game should NOT see the same content than the guys who do that.
Like wtf? Are the mmo games now just autopilot games where ppl yell "RUSH TO THE END" "faaaast i want this now without talking to anyone in the game cause i pay for this". Where are the old days social experiences and that adventure feeling? its all gone.
Game makers pls...stop following the current META of mmo games.
I have spoken.
At its peak WoW sported roughly 11 million subs. If one multiplies 11 million X $15 a month = $165 million a MONTH.
When a developer sets about designing a new MMORPG, that is what determines most of the outcome. Yes, there have been some "indie" games, funded through Kickstarter, I will reserve my comments on such until I see one launched. But, the majority will cater to the WoW pedestal model, wheather or not they have a chance at hitting it.
Basically it turns out that the masses, with their mass of cash, don't want to "take their time and read", or put effort into finding a quest local, or any of it.
Sucks, but until your post is louder than that pile of stinking money, they wont listen. Like I said maybe some of the kick started games will be awesome, but we will just have to wait and see.
Edit: Let me sum it up this way, when a band starts in a garage, they want to play stadiums in front of 50K fans, not in a dirty bar for 15 HARD CORE music aficionados.
Comments
All the little things of convenience combined is what makes for a boring product in the end, at least for a certain type of gamer. Its not that each one of these features alone would have a major impact.
Although some do. RDF for example fundamentally changes the way players view dungeons - they are not parts of the world you go to to kill some monsters at - rather, they are instanced minigames you can repeat over and over. Now if all the tool did was finding a group, the impact wouldn't be so major, but add to that extra rewards (which in that specific game you used to have to pick up from an NPC before the tool was introduced) and instant teleportation (to the instance and back again), the impact becomes pretty huge.
Basing your argument of those features being fine on the fact World of Warcraft remained a big game after introducing them isn't exactly fair either by the way. The game is big because it is big. Population draws population. And while the population might stay high, it doesn't mean the same players kept on playing - the amount of players who started later than Vanilla surpassed the amount of those, who'd played the game nearly since release, already in WOTLK.
In the end, there is a greater audience for a game with all these convenience related features, but there's also a large amount of people who do not like them - the latter is the type of gamer the OP, I am guessing, would belong to.
The Weekly Wizardry blog
Well if we talk about wow and how the "majory" ppl are those casuals that wants everything fast and now. If you just look subscriber the graphs. its just going down. Ppl just rush trough the end and then what? theres nothing to do and they switch to another game cause they dont give shit. Same goes with the hardcore players. They unsubscribe and wait till the next patch. Back in the days there was raids waiting for you after you finished the one that was the "end game", There it waits you, go and get there. To get my point in BC the first raid 2nd boss took about 18 days to kill. (im not so sure about the expansion) but then in cataclysm the whole CONTENT was cleared in 3 days. What happened? Imo the game should go harder and harder along the way to keep players excited. Not easier...
The game is just simply so easy now days. hell you can lvl up ur character without using any spell. just LFD and follow some1. Theres none, zero challenge in the game now. Tanks just pull the whole instances and dps nuke them down. No anymore tactics "sheep this one" "sap that one". Its just mindles RUSH.
What you do with manabar below lvl 90 ? or even above that. What you do with the mage foodtablet anymore? just asking...
How is that good thing to let ppl just rush trough the game and let people skip some content? and yes it takes time to make alts and it sucks if your friend wants to start playing the game but thats a good thing. Imo its wrong if your guild needs some1 to roll X character and you say "i make it. wait couple days and we are good to go". You give so much more value and respect to your main character cause it rly tooked your time and effort to get where you are now.
Well to continue with that analogy, it costs the same amount to grow lemons of sufficient quality that it does for oranges. Market forces have decided, through metrics, research, meta-data, whatever, that there might not be a sufficent market for lemons to warrent the expendature.
Some people are experimenting with sub-clones of different lemons though, but so far, of the lemons released none have really been of a quality level that lemon enthusiesits widely accept.
Well, the gaming industry as a whole, is continuing to move away from the "forced" challenge model that had risen in the Arcade/NES days. The direction that they seem to be headed is the "optional" challenge. The achievements, like the raid metas in WoW, the hard mode raids. They provide the base experience open to all players while the "hardcore" need to take it upon themselves to go the extra mile and take the optional challenge. It seems to be that there is a subset of players who cant bring themselves to choose the hard path but would rather have it forced upon them and everyone else at the same time.
I'm not saying that MMOs do a great job with these options all the time, but thats the direction they are headed.
And i dont get it why ALL new mmo:s follow this disgusting easy rush "here take my hand and il lead the way into the end" system.
Part of it, Im sure, is the developer's struggle to keep people interested in a game, when players have a new MMO or 2 coming out, seemingly, every 6 months, as well as a host of other games to go to that have already been released. To slow, people lose interest (heck I remember those slow days, hours of camping dervishes in North Desert of Ro, and the Paludal Caverns in EQ), to fast people burn through all the content and get bored. They seem to be favoring the speed side, but no one have found the perfect balance yet.
At its peak WoW sported roughly 11 million subs. If one multiplies 11 million X $15 a month = $165 million a MONTH.
When a developer sets about designing a new MMORPG, that is what determines most of the outcome. Yes, there have been some "indie" games, funded through Kickstarter, I will reserve my comments on such until I see one launched. But, the majority will cater to the WoW pedestal model, wheather or not they have a chance at hitting it.
Basically it turns out that the masses, with their mass of cash, don't want to "take their time and read", or put effort into finding a quest local, or any of it.
Sucks, but until your post is louder than that pile of stinking money, they wont listen. Like I said maybe some of the kick started games will be awesome, but we will just have to wait and see.
Edit: Let me sum it up this way, when a band starts in a garage, they want to play stadiums in front of 50K fans, not in a dirty bar for 15 HARD CORE music aficionados.
If you want challenging combat, play D3. MMOs can learn a thing or two from D3 about designing combat, and make a difficulty slider.