Games today lack any sort of challenge. There is no "game over", no "try again", no "you lose", etc... There are no obstacles, no challenges, no victories. All that exists is showing up, standing in line and waiting for your reward to be handed out.
uh? Isn't wiping a raid "you lose" and "try again"?
Another example, most people fail high greater rifts in D3, and they try again and again.
Ditto for single player games where people "lose" and "try again" by reload.
And if you play any pvp game, by definition, half of the players "lose". So I don't know where this "no 'game over', no 'try again', no 'you lose'" is coming from.
I think the real disappointments are from games that you actually enjoy playing.
I really agree with this. This describes the conflicted feelings I have about ESO. This game has been so much fun, but also extremely irritating. I love the combat. I really don't like some of the development decisions on the direction of this still-under-development game.
Maybe if there was better communication from the devs and I could understand why some of the decisions are made, I would feel better about it.
Maybe it's too ideal these days, but I would prefer playing a game made by developers who see their players as a community rather than a game made by a corporation that sees their players as consumers of content that they don't need to care about as long as they pay.
Have a look at Sword Coast Legends and their dealings with the community. It was a total sham till the CEO and many devs took to the forums to personally answer and deal with the negativity that were building in excess. Needless to say, A LOT of people were pissed off, asked for refunds directly and never looked back. Though, the communication and transparency N-Space chose to have helped them steer clear of any future disappointment.
Peoples own perceptions and expectations are two of the main causes for disappointment in MMOs. People let themselves get hyped to way to easily and way to high for a new game, and when its released, it could still be a decent game but because of their hype, it doesn't meet their overly high expectations so they feel horridly disappointed.
As for their own perceptions. Look at LFG systems. People love to say LFG killed socializing in mmos but it didn't. Before LFG all you had was spamming in trade/general/shout. That's not socializing. But people ignore that because it doesn't fit in with their perception. They also ignore the fact that there's nothing stopping them from talking to the people that they were matched with via LFG system. They all just say "they're randoms, i'll never see them again so why talk to them" but they ignore the fact that if they did talk to them and could just as well find a good friend, then continue to group with them later.
These are imo the two biggest reasons for disappointment, nothing to do with the devs of the game or anything. We are our own greatest enemy. It's an old saying because its true.
Games today lack any sort of challenge. There is no "game over", no "try again", no "you lose", etc... There are no obstacles, no challenges, no victories. All that exists is showing up, standing in line and waiting for your reward to be handed out.
uh? Isn't wiping a raid "you lose" and "try again"?
Another example, most people fail high greater rifts in D3, and they try again and again.
Ditto for single player games where people "lose" and "try again" by reload.
And if you play any pvp game, by definition, half of the players "lose". So I don't know where this "no 'game over', no 'try again', no 'you lose'" is coming from.
I wasn't speaking literally, obviously people still fail, but it is nothing like games of old. In EQ, it took some bosses months before the top guild could down them. Even in early WoW it took a lot of effort and many guilds would spend many evenings failing week after week until they finally were able to get the event down and succeed.
This was the same in group content as well. There were areas in dungeons of many of the older MMOs where people would make multiple attempts on mobs before they finally were able to defeat them. Even in WoW, Black rock depths turned many away who were unable to get deep in. Some couldn't even get past the first area.
Games today don't challenge the players. We see games like Dark Souls touted as a game of skill and yet that sort of style of arcade play was the average difficulty of many action games of the 80's.
Games have been made easier and easier in order to be more accessible to the masses. MMOs today are conquered in days, not the months they used to be. That is my point, games no longer challenge people, they merely provide entertainment to appeal to the lowest common denominator.
I wouldn't give up hopes that quickly... Initiatives like Kickstarter or even just the idea of "indie" has given rise to a bunch of talented visionaries who are hellbent (I hope lol) on developing and publishing meta-breaking games. We just need these visionaries to be supported by the major companies that will have the man power and resources to lay the infrastructure out for these games.
Games today lack any sort of challenge. There is no "game over", no "try again", no "you lose", etc... There are no obstacles, no challenges, no victories. All that exists is showing up, standing in line and waiting for your reward to be handed out.
uh? Isn't wiping a raid "you lose" and "try again"?
Another example, most people fail high greater rifts in D3, and they try again and again.
Ditto for single player games where people "lose" and "try again" by reload.
And if you play any pvp game, by definition, half of the players "lose". So I don't know where this "no 'game over', no 'try again', no 'you lose'" is coming from.
I wasn't speaking literally, obviously people still fail, but it is nothing like games of old. In EQ, it took some bosses months before the top guild could down them. Even in early WoW it took a lot of effort and many guilds would spend many evenings failing week after week until they finally were able to get the event down and succeed.
This was the same in group content as well. There were areas in dungeons of many of the older MMOs where people would make multiple attempts on mobs before they finally were able to defeat them. Even in WoW, Black rock depths turned many away who were unable to get deep in. Some couldn't even get past the first area.
Games today don't challenge the players. We see games like Dark Souls touted as a game of skill and yet that sort of style of arcade play was the average difficulty of many action games of the 80's.
Games have been made easier and easier in order to be more accessible to the masses. MMOs today are conquered in days, not the months they used to be. That is my point, games no longer challenge people, they merely provide entertainment to appeal to the lowest common denominator.
What you're speaking about had very little to do with actual difficulty or anything requiring skill and more to do with purposeful tuning to such a degree to extend the amount of time it took for players to get through content to give the devs time to create more content.
One of the most important aspects to me is quite simply..the community. Bad community,no matter how good the game,equals for a bad time in game. And people's attitude to be so unhelpful in starter areas really is usually the reason I do not continue with a game. Lack of willingness to help in the beginner areas usually indicates on how it will go in the later levels when you DO have to group up. Think about that next time someone asks for help. Oh and yes I do ask for help in newbie area,even though I probably don't need it,just to gauge reactions..so I imagine there are others do as well.
What you're speaking about had very little to do with actual difficulty or anything requiring skill and more to do with purposeful tuning to such a degree to extend the amount of time it took for players to get through content to give the devs time to create more content.
It was a numbers game, not a difficulty game.
I am not sure what you mean. That content took skill, it wasn't a matter of simply getting the gear and you won. Not to mention, some people could do content without having the fancy gear, it all came down to the players ability to work with others to achieve objectives. There were many times in EQ where my guild took down difficult bosses with fewer people, under geared and often without the ideal group makeups.
There were many people that could not win against bosses, even with all the fancy gear. Don't confuse today's itemization scheme with the difficulty of encounters of old. Mainstream is where we started to see events be strictly gear checks, with the result of winning an encounter being entirely due to the gear used which allowed players of little skill to easily succeed.
In EQ, the bosses weren't about gear exactly (it helped), they were about coordination and endurance. The fights were unforgiving and would not allow a single error or it meant a wipe. One heal chain mess up, one over agro, one mistake and you had to start all over.
Even in early WoW, you couldn't "numbers game" the black rock depth. You had to learn how to handle the content in order to move on. If you didn't have proper CC, approached the event properly, handled the issues with certain mob abilities, you wiped and it had nothing to do with gear, it was all about skill of the player. The content was hard, required you apply certain solutions.
What you're speaking about had very little to do with actual difficulty or anything requiring skill and more to do with purposeful tuning to such a degree to extend the amount of time it took for players to get through content to give the devs time to create more content.
It was a numbers game, not a difficulty game.
I am not sure what you mean. That content took skill, it wasn't a matter of simply getting the gear and you won. Not to mention, some people could do content without having the fancy gear, it all came down to the players ability to work with others to achieve objectives. There were many times in EQ where my guild took down difficult bosses with fewer people, under geared and often without the ideal group makeups.
There were many people that could not win against bosses, even with all the fancy gear. Don't confuse today's itemization scheme with the difficulty of encounters of old. Mainstream is where we started to see events be strictly gear checks, with the result of winning an encounter being entirely due to the gear used which allowed players of little skill to easily succeed.
In EQ, the bosses weren't about gear exactly (it helped), they were about coordination and endurance. The fights were unforgiving and would not allow a single error or it meant a wipe. One heal chain mess up, one over agro, one mistake and you had to start all over.
Even in early WoW, you couldn't "numbers game" the black rock depth. You had to learn how to handle the content in order to move on. If you didn't have proper CC, approached the event properly, handled the issues with certain mob abilities, you wiped and it had nothing to do with gear, it was all about skill of the player. The content was hard, required you apply certain solutions.
I agree for the most part. Lets not forget that equipment in EQ had minimal effect on your character in Vanilla. It had not stats and barely increased your damage. Thats why melee classes always had a hard time winning any encounter. There wasn't much skill in a solo encounter as a melee class. Mostly it was just luck of the draw. In a raid or group this was not the case though. A melee class had to know various tactics beyond just spamming taunt. There were often a lot of tricks to hold aggro. Your group mates also had to restrain themselves so as not to pull aggro away from the tank. It only took a few hits to a non tank to die. Casters had a fair amount of strategy in solo content as they were more skill based and had much larger variety of spells available than what you would see in games today.
I wasn't speaking literally, obviously people still fail, but it is nothing like games of old. In EQ, it took some bosses months before the top guild could down them. Even in early WoW it took a lot of effort and many guilds would spend many evenings failing week after week until they finally were able to get the event down and succeed.
and you think games .. entertainment .. should require customers to spend months on playing the same thing again and again before "beating the encounter"?
That does not sound fun to me. Challenges are artificially created by devs for consumers' enjoyment. Take D3 as an example. Greater Rift 100 is more challenging than ALL EQ encounters, because it is plainly impossible. GR 70 ... less so and i think a few (less than like 10) reached it for each class on the solo ladder.
There is nothing magical to make things difficult ... in fact, D3 has a sliding scale from very easy, to very hard (a few in the world can do it), to plainly impossible. Just having extremely difficult challenges does not add to the fun to 99.9999% of the players because they have no hope to reaching it anyway.
I agree for the most part. Lets not forget that equipment in EQ had minimal effect on your character in Vanilla. It had not stats and barely increased your damage. Thats why melee classes always had a hard time winning any encounter. There wasn't much skill in a solo encounter as a melee class. Mostly it was just luck of the draw. In a raid or group this was not the case though. A melee class had to know various tactics beyond just spamming taunt. There were often a lot of tricks to hold aggro. Your group mates also had to restrain themselves so as not to pull aggro away from the tank. It only took a few hits to a non tank to die. Casters had a fair amount of strategy in solo content as they were more skill based and had much larger variety of spells available than what you would see in games today.
I remember equipment having a solid noticeable effect (just not an overpowering effect), but it was contingent on many things because attributes and skill level were what truly capped ones ability. You could put Rubicite Breastplate on a level 1 and it would help quite a bit, but it wouldn't allow them to ignore things like you could in other games. That is, how much AC helped you really depended on your skill level in defense (which was capped by level) and how high your attributes were. It was a really great way to deal with too much overpowering in content, but still allowing top performance for a given character at that level. That is, you could "feel" the power when you got a powerful item, but it didn't trivialize content. In fact, even if you were very high level, you could get taken down by low levels if you were careless.
Raids were very complex. Many people who didn't play EQ (or didn't get very far in it) only know the fights as a dull auto-attack fight, but they miss all the subtle elements of play. Tank and healing rotations became very complex. Pulling was extremely delicate in many situations (pulling King Tormax to the WL zone line solo, Using a chain technique to pull Dain Frostweaver to the zone line (he banished players to the pit every 45 seconds) while setting up a CoH chain to summon banished players back during the fight, using a complex tank chain lineup for the AoW, etc....)
Aggro, that one was often the killer. I have seen almost an entire raid wipe instantly when someone over aggored and made the Avatar of War turn for a brief second (remember he was hasted, quad hit and riposted everything when enraged).
You are right about the spells. There were a vast number of spells and this allowed all kinds of different approaches to fights. The more complex the game systems, the more emergent the game play.
I think many people these days think "difficulty" = arcade action, that if the game isn't testing your reflexes, it isn't difficult. That though is completely untrue as you well know.
I wasn't speaking literally, obviously people still fail, but it is nothing like games of old. In EQ, it took some bosses months before the top guild could down them. Even in early WoW it took a lot of effort and many guilds would spend many evenings failing week after week until they finally were able to get the event down and succeed.
and you think games .. entertainment .. should require customers to spend months on playing the same thing again and again before "beating the encounter"?
That does not sound fun to me. Challenges are artificially created by devs for consumers' enjoyment. Take D3 as an example. Greater Rift 100 is more challenging than ALL EQ encounters, because it is plainly impossible. GR 70 ... less so and i think a few (less than like 10) reached it for each class on the solo ladder.
There is nothing magical to make things difficult ... in fact, D3 has a sliding scale from very easy, to very hard (a few in the world can do it), to plainly impossible. Just having extremely difficult challenges does not add to the fun to 99.9999% of the players because they have no hope to reaching it anyway.
Good points, but is there anything about playing Diablo 3 that is entertaining? To me EQ had a lot more going on. Diablo 3 has a small world and the story isn't interesting (to me). The adventures are fairly repetitive and don't have a large amount of variety in art work. There are no cultures/factions in D3. It is simple like playing a game of chess. I guess that appeals to some people, but I find it very dull quickly. It offers so little outside of grinding loot/paragon levels over and over again. At least EQ had some fun stuff like being able to shrink and grow people, casting illusion spells to change your appearance and infiltrate opposing cultures cities, outside cities, trade in person areas, encountering others in general, etc.
I wasn't speaking literally, obviously people still fail, but it is nothing like games of old. In EQ, it took some bosses months before the top guild could down them. Even in early WoW it took a lot of effort and many guilds would spend many evenings failing week after week until they finally were able to get the event down and succeed.
and you think games .. entertainment .. should require customers to spend months on playing the same thing again and again before "beating the encounter"?
Dont mix games and entertainment. Sure, games should be entertaining but not all entertainment is a game. Games require challenges. MMO games require challenges that will keep people playing for months. You can make people grind and play the rng roulette until their eyes bleed or you can provide them with group challenges difficult and complex enough to take weeks to overcome (and sure, some grind's going to be there too). Me, I prefer the latter.
I wasn't speaking literally, obviously people still fail, but it is nothing like games of old. In EQ, it took some bosses months before the top guild could down them. Even in early WoW it took a lot of effort and many guilds would spend many evenings failing week after week until they finally were able to get the event down and succeed.
and you think games .. entertainment .. should require customers to spend months on playing the same thing again and again before "beating the encounter"?
That does not sound fun to me. Challenges are artificially created by devs for consumers' enjoyment. Take D3 as an example. Greater Rift 100 is more challenging than ALL EQ encounters, because it is plainly impossible. GR 70 ... less so and i think a few (less than like 10) reached it for each class on the solo ladder.
There is nothing magical to make things difficult ... in fact, D3 has a sliding scale from very easy, to very hard (a few in the world can do it), to plainly impossible. Just having extremely difficult challenges does not add to the fun to 99.9999% of the players because they have no hope to reaching it anyway.
I can't stand the button smashing arcade hack and slash reflex play of D3. Heck, If I wanted that style of arcade play, I would go back and play Nintendo games. EQ is nothing like D3, it is a different style, a different game, and requires different play.
Though to answer your question. Yes, I want it to take a long time for people to finally beat the content. I want EQ or something similar again. If I wanted easy wins and mind numbing play where everyone is a winner, I would play the MMOs today.
I've rarely found myself disappointed with an MMORPG, or any game really. Most turn out to be what i expected. Maybe it's the simple fact that when I read about games, I compare what I'm reading to what I've experienced in the past. I also ignore marketing buzzwords like, best, biggest, bigger, dynamic, etc... as that's all they are...buzzwords.
I also don't have a belief system that says a game should or should not have x,y or z...
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Virtual world has been tried in games like The Second Life, and that is not anywhere close to be as successful as combat centric games. Look at LoL .. it is nothing but jump in and combat.
The only games that have some virtual world feel are the survival ones. Other than that, i think you probably won't see much of virtual world.
In fact, if you look at combat centric games .. they are increasingly LESS virtual world (from EQ to WOW to focused convenient combat games like warframe or Marvel Heroes).
Why so black and white? A virtual world can also be combat centric. You can make up a setting that includes any feature from nowadays themepark MMO's and put them in a virtual world. A sandbox can have quests (no matter if you make your own or are handed one by talking to some npc) and can evolve around combat. Just in a virtual world, you expect non combat activities and roles too for it to be convincing. Still, the world can all be about some war between realms or planets or whatever.
I didn't they are mutually exclusive. I was merely pointing out that the trend is LESS virtual world.
I am calling into question of whether it is even desirable, not that it is not possible to make. There are few virtual world combat games .. like Planetside 2.
But the trend is convenient, instanced based, focused games (with a few game modes). And that indicates that virtual worlds, at least in a MMO environment (which is different from single player virtual world games) is really getting LESS popular.
I am not sure what you mean. That content took skill, it wasn't a matter of simply getting the gear and you won. Not to mention, some people could do content without having the fancy gear, it all came down to the players ability to work with others to achieve objectives. There were many times in EQ where my guild took down difficult bosses with fewer people, under geared and often without the ideal group makeups.
There were many people that could not win against bosses, even with all the fancy gear. Don't confuse today's itemization scheme with the difficulty of encounters of old. Mainstream is where we started to see events be strictly gear checks, with the result of winning an encounter being entirely due to the gear used which allowed players of little skill to easily succeed.
In EQ, the bosses weren't about gear exactly (it helped), they were about coordination and endurance. The fights were unforgiving and would not allow a single error or it meant a wipe. One heal chain mess up, one over agro, one mistake and you had to start all over.
Even in early WoW, you couldn't "numbers game" the black rock depth. You had to learn how to handle the content in order to move on. If you didn't have proper CC, approached the event properly, handled the issues with certain mob abilities, you wiped and it had nothing to do with gear, it was all about skill of the player. The content was hard, required you apply certain solutions.
I agree for the most part. Lets not forget that equipment in EQ had minimal effect on your character in Vanilla. It had not stats and barely increased your damage. Thats why melee classes always had a hard time winning any encounter. There wasn't much skill in a solo encounter as a melee class. Mostly it was just luck of the draw. In a raid or group this was not the case though. A melee class had to know various tactics beyond just spamming taunt. There were often a lot of tricks to hold aggro. Your group mates also had to restrain themselves so as not to pull aggro away from the tank. It only took a few hits to a non tank to die. Casters had a fair amount of strategy in solo content as they were more skill based and had much larger variety of spells available than what you would see in games today.
The problem is it still all came down to a game of numbers, requiring gear or not doesn't really change that. I think that's what people are arguing when they say old games really didn't have difficulty, they had pre requisites to compete. Which most of those were based on time played, and/or level reached (you now have the proper CC ability to move forward, or you can now mitigate x amount of damage, etc...).
EQ and games like it mostly focused on level based mechanics, meaning everything is tuned to a players level as well as skill loadout at that level. Having the right skill as well as level for the job is what is important. Or the right number of players of that level. This all comes down to knowledge of the game. The longer you play the better at it you get, because you know what's required to accomplish this or that.
Games that rely on player skill are more about pattern memorization/mastery. They're about timing, twitch skill and ability to remember the pattern that boss just did, in order to avoid it on the next try.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
I am not sure what you mean. That content took skill, it wasn't a matter of simply getting the gear and you won. Not to mention, some people could do content without having the fancy gear, it all came down to the players ability to work with others to achieve objectives. There were many times in EQ where my guild took down difficult bosses with fewer people, under geared and often without the ideal group makeups.
There were many people that could not win against bosses, even with all the fancy gear. Don't confuse today's itemization scheme with the difficulty of encounters of old. Mainstream is where we started to see events be strictly gear checks, with the result of winning an encounter being entirely due to the gear used which allowed players of little skill to easily succeed.
In EQ, the bosses weren't about gear exactly (it helped), they were about coordination and endurance. The fights were unforgiving and would not allow a single error or it meant a wipe. One heal chain mess up, one over agro, one mistake and you had to start all over.
Even in early WoW, you couldn't "numbers game" the black rock depth. You had to learn how to handle the content in order to move on. If you didn't have proper CC, approached the event properly, handled the issues with certain mob abilities, you wiped and it had nothing to do with gear, it was all about skill of the player. The content was hard, required you apply certain solutions.
I agree for the most part. Lets not forget that equipment in EQ had minimal effect on your character in Vanilla. It had not stats and barely increased your damage. Thats why melee classes always had a hard time winning any encounter. There wasn't much skill in a solo encounter as a melee class. Mostly it was just luck of the draw. In a raid or group this was not the case though. A melee class had to know various tactics beyond just spamming taunt. There were often a lot of tricks to hold aggro. Your group mates also had to restrain themselves so as not to pull aggro away from the tank. It only took a few hits to a non tank to die. Casters had a fair amount of strategy in solo content as they were more skill based and had much larger variety of spells available than what you would see in games today.
The problem is it still all came down to a game of numbers, requiring gear or not doesn't really change that. I think that's what people are arguing when they say old games really didn't have difficulty, they had pre requisites to compete. Which most of those were based on time played, and/or level reached (you now have the proper CC ability to move forward, or you can now mitigate x amount of damage, etc...).
EQ and games like it mostly focused on level based mechanics, meaning everything is tuned to a players level as well as skill loadout at that level. Having the right skill as well as level for the job is what is important. Or the right number of players of that level. This all comes down to knowledge of the game. The longer you play the better at it you get, because you know what's required to accomplish this or that.
Games that rely on player skill are more about pattern memorization/mastery. They're about timing, twitch skill and ability to remember the pattern that boss just did, in order to avoid it on the next try.
I have post in here that I went into a few ideas on why games were harder and it wasn't time consumption based or number based. I was simple pointing out that not only was the game harder throughout in various ways, but it was also artificially harder (which is harder). The mobs were more powerful and had a better chance to kill you. That is not the only form of difficulty. You also couldn't beat everything with just time. I used to spend most of my day playing EQ when I was younger. I was unable to complete most of the content even though I eventually hit max level after a very long period of time. I tried dungeons and raiding in the game, but had little success other then camping certain dungeons that were way lower then my level. Even then I sometimes still died in those lower level dungeons. I hate to reiterate this again, but I jumped into WoW and was able to complete all the dungeons in Vanilla and the only raid available at the time (motlen core). It wasn't easy, but it was a lot easier.
The problem is it still all came down to a game of numbers, requiring gear or not doesn't really change that. I think that's what people are arguing when they say old games really didn't have difficulty, they had pre requisites to compete. Which most of those were based on time played, and/or level reached (you now have the proper CC ability to move forward, or you can now mitigate x amount of damage, etc...).
EQ and games like it mostly focused on level based mechanics, meaning everything is tuned to a players level as well as skill loadout at that level. Having the right skill as well as level for the job is what is important. Or the right number of players of that level. This all comes down to knowledge of the game. The longer you play the better at it you get, because you know what's required to accomplish this or that.
Games that rely on player skill are more about pattern memorization/mastery. They're about timing, twitch skill and ability to remember the pattern that boss just did, in order to avoid it on the next try.
That is not true though. That is not how EQ was. You could take two groups with the same gear, same levels, same spells, same AAs and they would not equally do content. Those things did not mean success, if they did, it wouldn't have taken guilds months to defeat the content. Heck, even early WoW was not like that. Skill mattered, how you approached the event, how your performed, etc...
It was how you played your class, how you executed your spells, skills, etc... how you worked with the rest of the group and how much you understood about your class and those you played with. Heck, I sent many "twinked" players in EQ packing because they didn't know how to play their class.
That said, that is part of the game with these. Games like EQ were designed after D&D style games and systems. The point of the game was the character development and how to apply that within the games systems to succeed in it.
Player action games are only concerned with reflex and reaction time, pattern memorization, etc... That is fine, but it is a different type of game, requires a different set of skills. cRPG games have different set of strategy and focus, saying that difficulty is linked to physical reaction is to dismiss the challenge of mental games like chess. Physical skill is merely one type of game.
The problem is it still all came down to a game of numbers, requiring gear or not doesn't really change that. I think that's what people are arguing when they say old games really didn't have difficulty, they had pre requisites to compete. Which most of those were based on time played, and/or level reached (you now have the proper CC ability to move forward, or you can now mitigate x amount of damage, etc...).
EQ and games like it mostly focused on level based mechanics, meaning everything is tuned to a players level as well as skill loadout at that level. Having the right skill as well as level for the job is what is important. Or the right number of players of that level. This all comes down to knowledge of the game. The longer you play the better at it you get, because you know what's required to accomplish this or that.
Games that rely on player skill are more about pattern memorization/mastery. They're about timing, twitch skill and ability to remember the pattern that boss just did, in order to avoid it on the next try.
That is not true though. That is not how EQ was. You could take two groups with the same gear, same levels, same spells, same AAs and they would not equally do content. Those things did not mean success, if they did, it wouldn't have taken guilds months to defeat the content. Heck, even early WoW was not like that. Skill mattered, how you approached the event, how your performed, etc...
Well that still goes in stride with what I said, "This all comes down to knowledge of the game. The longer you play the
better at it you get, because you know what's required to accomplish
this or that "..That's the nature of numerical things. That's all it takes to be good at an MMORPG, knowledge.
This isn't true for a twitch based game...where what people tend to refer to as player skill comes into play, you could know all it takes, yet still not defeat it because your hand eye coordination isn't up to par, or your reflexes are too slow.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Comments
Another example, most people fail high greater rifts in D3, and they try again and again.
Ditto for single player games where people "lose" and "try again" by reload.
And if you play any pvp game, by definition, half of the players "lose". So I don't know where this "no 'game over', no 'try again', no 'you lose'" is coming from.
Maybe if there was better communication from the devs and I could understand why some of the decisions are made, I would feel better about it.
Maybe it's too ideal these days, but I would prefer playing a game made by developers who see their players as a community rather than a game made by a corporation that sees their players as consumers of content that they don't need to care about as long as they pay.
As for their own perceptions. Look at LFG systems. People love to say LFG killed socializing in mmos but it didn't. Before LFG all you had was spamming in trade/general/shout. That's not socializing. But people ignore that because it doesn't fit in with their perception. They also ignore the fact that there's nothing stopping them from talking to the people that they were matched with via LFG system. They all just say "they're randoms, i'll never see them again so why talk to them" but they ignore the fact that if they did talk to them and could just as well find a good friend, then continue to group with them later.
These are imo the two biggest reasons for disappointment, nothing to do with the devs of the game or anything. We are our own greatest enemy. It's an old saying because its true.
Be the Ultimate Ninja! Play Billy Vs. SNAKEMAN today!
I wasn't speaking literally, obviously people still fail, but it is nothing like games of old. In EQ, it took some bosses months before the top guild could down them. Even in early WoW it took a lot of effort and many guilds would spend many evenings failing week after week until they finally were able to get the event down and succeed.
This was the same in group content as well. There were areas in dungeons of many of the older MMOs where people would make multiple attempts on mobs before they finally were able to defeat them. Even in WoW, Black rock depths turned many away who were unable to get deep in. Some couldn't even get past the first area.
Games today don't challenge the players. We see games like Dark Souls touted as a game of skill and yet that sort of style of arcade play was the average difficulty of many action games of the 80's.
Games have been made easier and easier in order to be more accessible to the masses. MMOs today are conquered in days, not the months they used to be. That is my point, games no longer challenge people, they merely provide entertainment to appeal to the lowest common denominator.
It was a numbers game, not a difficulty game.
Be the Ultimate Ninja! Play Billy Vs. SNAKEMAN today!
Bad community,no matter how good the game,equals for a bad time in game.
And people's attitude to be so unhelpful in starter areas really is usually the reason I do not continue with a game. Lack of willingness to help in the beginner areas usually indicates on how it will go in the later levels when you DO have to group up. Think about that next time someone asks for help. Oh and yes I do ask for help in newbie area,even though I probably don't need it,just to gauge reactions..so I imagine there are others do as well.
I am not sure what you mean. That content took skill, it wasn't a matter of simply getting the gear and you won. Not to mention, some people could do content without having the fancy gear, it all came down to the players ability to work with others to achieve objectives. There were many times in EQ where my guild took down difficult bosses with fewer people, under geared and often without the ideal group makeups.
There were many people that could not win against bosses, even with all the fancy gear. Don't confuse today's itemization scheme with the difficulty of encounters of old. Mainstream is where we started to see events be strictly gear checks, with the result of winning an encounter being entirely due to the gear used which allowed players of little skill to easily succeed.
In EQ, the bosses weren't about gear exactly (it helped), they were about coordination and endurance. The fights were unforgiving and would not allow a single error or it meant a wipe. One heal chain mess up, one over agro, one mistake and you had to start all over.
Even in early WoW, you couldn't "numbers game" the black rock depth. You had to learn how to handle the content in order to move on. If you didn't have proper CC, approached the event properly, handled the issues with certain mob abilities, you wiped and it had nothing to do with gear, it was all about skill of the player. The content was hard, required you apply certain solutions.
That does not sound fun to me. Challenges are artificially created by devs for consumers' enjoyment. Take D3 as an example. Greater Rift 100 is more challenging than ALL EQ encounters, because it is plainly impossible. GR 70 ... less so and i think a few (less than like 10) reached it for each class on the solo ladder.
There is nothing magical to make things difficult ... in fact, D3 has a sliding scale from very easy, to very hard (a few in the world can do it), to plainly impossible. Just having extremely difficult challenges does not add to the fun to 99.9999% of the players because they have no hope to reaching it anyway.
Raids were very complex. Many people who didn't play EQ (or didn't get very far in it) only know the fights as a dull auto-attack fight, but they miss all the subtle elements of play. Tank and healing rotations became very complex. Pulling was extremely delicate in many situations (pulling King Tormax to the WL zone line solo, Using a chain technique to pull Dain Frostweaver to the zone line (he banished players to the pit every 45 seconds) while setting up a CoH chain to summon banished players back during the fight, using a complex tank chain lineup for the AoW, etc....)
Aggro, that one was often the killer. I have seen almost an entire raid wipe instantly when someone over aggored and made the Avatar of War turn for a brief second (remember he was hasted, quad hit and riposted everything when enraged).
You are right about the spells. There were a vast number of spells and this allowed all kinds of different approaches to fights. The more complex the game systems, the more emergent the game play.
I think many people these days think "difficulty" = arcade action, that if the game isn't testing your reflexes, it isn't difficult. That though is completely untrue as you well know.
To OP's original question:
Instances!!!! < My big one i hate so much.
Give me an open, living breathing world or atleast the best you can.
1. Lack of constant updates.
2. not being fresh, sticking to old tested methods with 0 risk.
3. mindless forced grinds like dailies just to make sure you are encouraged to login everyday.
4. dull combat. mostly i am fine as long as i can feel the impact of my attacks.
my top MMOs: UO,DAOC,WoW,GW2
most of my posts are just my opinions they are not facts,it is the same for you too.
I can't stand the button smashing arcade hack and slash reflex play of D3. Heck, If I wanted that style of arcade play, I would go back and play Nintendo games. EQ is nothing like D3, it is a different style, a different game, and requires different play.
Though to answer your question. Yes, I want it to take a long time for people to finally beat the content. I want EQ or something similar again. If I wanted easy wins and mind numbing play where everyone is a winner, I would play the MMOs today.
I also don't have a belief system that says a game should or should not have x,y or z...
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
I am calling into question of whether it is even desirable, not that it is not possible to make. There are few virtual world combat games .. like Planetside 2.
But the trend is convenient, instanced based, focused games (with a few game modes). And that indicates that virtual worlds, at least in a MMO environment (which is different from single player virtual world games) is really getting LESS popular.
EQ and games like it mostly focused on level based mechanics, meaning everything is tuned to a players level as well as skill loadout at that level. Having the right skill as well as level for the job is what is important. Or the right number of players of that level. This all comes down to knowledge of the game. The longer you play the better at it you get, because you know what's required to accomplish this or that.
Games that rely on player skill are more about pattern memorization/mastery. They're about timing, twitch skill and ability to remember the pattern that boss just did, in order to avoid it on the next try.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
It was how you played your class, how you executed your spells, skills, etc... how you worked with the rest of the group and how much you understood about your class and those you played with. Heck, I sent many "twinked" players in EQ packing because they didn't know how to play their class.
That said, that is part of the game with these. Games like EQ were designed after D&D style games and systems. The point of the game was the character development and how to apply that within the games systems to succeed in it.
Player action games are only concerned with reflex and reaction time, pattern memorization, etc... That is fine, but it is a different type of game, requires a different set of skills. cRPG games have different set of strategy and focus, saying that difficulty is linked to physical reaction is to dismiss the challenge of mental games like chess. Physical skill is merely one type of game.
This isn't true for a twitch based game...where what people tend to refer to as player skill comes into play, you could know all it takes, yet still not defeat it because your hand eye coordination isn't up to par, or your reflexes are too slow.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson