Are we basing this purely on mmorpgs? Cause mmorpgs were never the most difficult genre to begin with.
Exactly, I can't think of a game that has been truly hard in the RPG genre as a whole, at least that I've ever played. It's always boiled down to short time to kill enemies vs long time to kill them, staying alive isn't all that hard unless you're completely underdeveloped for the encounter. Take games like NwN 1+2, neither was all that hard, the biggest challenge on higher difficulties is making sure your friends or companions don't kill you. Computer controlled enemies have always been easy. PVP is the only real area I've felt challenged in gaming.
I would say that EQ was hard compared to most games now. It was hard and tedious in most way.
I would say most games get refined down in sequels for better and worst. MMORPG is largely just a refinement of WoW as a genre. Take away the open world to make it easier to level on paths. Make game play easier and fail resistant. Give players path of least resistance conveniences at every turn. Reduce choices how players can make to their characters.
Well, we did die a lot more in EQ so it wasn't just more time consuming, it was actually harder as well (Guildwars were originally relative hard before the nerfs but not time consuming).
As for NWN 1 & 2, those games were made after games became easier around year 2000. Something huge happened there where games after the year were far easier and older games generally harder. Diablo and Diablo 2 are good examples, the first game were a lot tougher.
Baldurs gate were harder then NWN as well. Then difficulty kinda stopped for some years before getting easier again in the late 2000s.
Well, that is at least how I feel it. Baldurs gate -> NWN -> DA D1 -> D2 -> D3.
Now, BG was still not one of the harder RPGs ever made or anything but it was pretty challenging at times. I don't buy that it just is the AI, a stupid AI will of course be easier then a smart one but your relative strenght compared to the enemies matters a lot.
We could go over the concept of having to be successful more than a certain % amount to succeed, but I doubt people would listen.
If you have a 100 experience until next level, get 1 experience per level, and lose 5 experience per death you would need to kill 6 mobs successfully for every death to eventually level up.
I don't recall exactly how much experience was lost in EQ for a death, but we used to count experience in what we called bubbles (the experience bar had little rounded areas that looked like separate bubbles). It seemed like you would lose 2 to 3 bubbles when you died. I recall it taking many kills just to get one bubble. I never actually counted though.
There were hell levels that required extra experience. Many levels didn't give you any new spells or skills to use and when you did get one of those levels you still had to figure out where to buy them or how to craft them.
Then you have to take into account wandering mobs and mobs with additional aggro that might sneak up and one or two shot you.
Having to retrieve you corpse increased chance of death. Especially if you were in a dungeon when you died.
People were fairly unpredictable in a static world with no instances. One might help you and one might bring a train down on you. This again increased chance of death.
Having nothing to really guide you increased chance of death as you didn't know what was safe to kill and what wasn't until you tried. The con system often didn't help as light blue (easy mobs) could sometimes be harder than red (wipe the floor with you mobs).
Equipment was fairly difficult to come by and people wouldn't keep you in a group unless you knew what you were doing because of the steep experience penalty for dying. In reality the equipment didn't help much in most cases though as it was generally something like 2 damage 5 delay on a weapon and an upgrade would be 3 damage 5 delay or 2 damage 4 delay, etc.
Dungeons were pretty nasty places. It was easy to die if you were actually level appropriate for the dungeon. Even if you were a fair amount of levels above the dungeon you would still have a decent chance of being killed by multiple green mobs or green bosses (very easy mobs).
Overall it was at times difficult to hit that needed success rate unless you played solo(which required a solo class) and sat in a spot kiting mobs around. Finding a group wasn't always an easy task and it was even harder to find one that would be fairly successful at earning more experience then they lost from dying.
There are devs that cater to those who do not want "dumbed down." Demon souls and the Dark Souls series being top of that list in my opinion. And they have mmo options so the title applies to this forum.
It's all about options. Some people want dumb and some want smarter. Just research and you'll get the game you want.
I personally think "hard mode" should be added to mmo's. Esp if the mmo doesn't allow modding.
The Myth of Old Skool requires constant repetition of "we're inherently better than These Kids Today."
Don't buy it for a second, children.
Everything wasn't better in the past and neither were everything worse.
Some things were good with the early games, more or less anyone could make one back then and the diversity was awesome on machines like the C-64. Some games were close to im possible while others were easy, just take your pick of the type of game you enjoyed and your preferable difficulty and there were loads of games for you.
That part is far worse today, most games have about the same difficulty and the variation is nowhere near the old level.
On the plus side are games way better looking, you can play with friends who are on a different location and unlike the C-64 is not 99% of all games pirate copies anymore.
The problem with the new school fans is that they never played the old games. The problem with old schoolers is that they tend to either have rose colored glasses about the past or a problem with enjoying current games for what they are.
But I really wish someone could make a modern computer that like the C-64 anyone could make a fun game for. Some of the best games ever made were made by a single guy who were bored, Tetris for example. An yeah, you more or less can on cellphones but it isn't the same thing (or it is me being old, mobile games never really worked for me, dunno why).
I don't think so man. The barrier of entry to game creation was huge "back then". Learning assembly, C, and C++ was not something available to all. Even after the internet got going that sort of knowledge wasn't widely available. Console kits were extremely expensive.
Many new games have multiple modes of play including exploration mode and hardcore "delete my game save" mode. Back then it was either play the game "as is" or don't play it. Most didn't offer those sorts of options then.
There are a lot of free or very cheap game engines available for hobbyists and budding developers. Easy access to development tools has never been better.
I agree about veteran rose colored glasses and with younger gamers missing out on an experience in time that can't be replicated, but I think gaming is better now than ever. More options, more access, more games both old and new.
I would rethink that statement. Consider that computers were built in someones garage. It's true there wasn't much knowledge available, but there were more people willing to devote almost all their time to computers in some facet or another.
Are we basing this purely on mmorpgs? Cause mmorpgs were never the most difficult genre to begin with.
Exactly, I can't think of a game that has been truly hard in the RPG genre as a whole, at least that I've ever played. It's always boiled down to short time to kill enemies vs long time to kill them, staying alive isn't all that hard unless you're completely underdeveloped for the encounter. Take games like NwN 1+2, neither was all that hard, the biggest challenge on higher difficulties is making sure your friends or companions don't kill you. Computer controlled enemies have always been easy. PVP is the only real area I've felt challenged in gaming.
I would say that EQ was hard compared to most games now. It was hard and tedious in most way.
I would say most games get refined down in sequels for better and worst. MMORPG is largely just a refinement of WoW as a genre. Take away the open world to make it easier to level on paths. Make game play easier and fail resistant. Give players path of least resistance conveniences at every turn. Reduce choices how players can make to their characters.
Well, we did die a lot more in EQ so it wasn't just more time consuming, it was actually harder as well (Guildwars were originally relative hard before the nerfs but not time consuming).
As for NWN 1 & 2, those games were made after games became easier around year 2000. Something huge happened there where games after the year were far easier and older games generally harder. Diablo and Diablo 2 are good examples, the first game were a lot tougher.
Baldurs gate were harder then NWN as well. Then difficulty kinda stopped for some years before getting easier again in the late 2000s.
Well, that is at least how I feel it. Baldurs gate -> NWN -> DA D1 -> D2 -> D3.
Now, BG was still not one of the harder RPGs ever made or anything but it was pretty challenging at times. I don't buy that it just is the AI, a stupid AI will of course be easier then a smart one but your relative strenght compared to the enemies matters a lot.
We could go over the concept of having to be successful more than a certain % amount to succeed, but I doubt people would listen.
If you have a 100 experience until next level, get 1 experience per level, and lose 5 experience per death you would need to kill 6 mobs successfully for every death to eventually level up.
I don't recall exactly how much experience was lost in EQ for a death, but we used to count experience in what we called bubbles (the experience bar had little rounded areas that looked like separate bubbles). It seemed like you would lose 2 to 3 bubbles when you died. I recall it taking many kills just to get one bubble. I never actually counted though.
There were hell levels that required extra experience. Many levels didn't give you any new spells or skills to use and when you did get one of those levels you still had to figure out where to buy them or how to craft them.
Then you have to take into account wandering mobs and mobs with additional aggro that might sneak up and one or two shot you.
Having to retrieve you corpse increased chance of death. Especially if you were in a dungeon when you died.
People were fairly unpredictable in a static world with no instances. One might help you and one might bring a train down on you. This again increased chance of death.
Having nothing to really guide you increased chance of death as you didn't know what was safe to kill and what wasn't until you tried. The con system often didn't help as light blue (easy mobs) could sometimes be harder than red (wipe the floor with you mobs).
Equipment was fairly difficult to come by and people wouldn't keep you in a group unless you knew what you were doing because of the steep experience penalty for dying. In reality the equipment didn't help much in most cases though as it was generally something like 2 damage 5 delay on a weapon and an upgrade would be 3 damage 5 delay or 2 damage 4 delay, etc.
Dungeons were pretty nasty places. It was easy to die if you were actually level appropriate for the dungeon. Even if you were a fair amount of levels above the dungeon you would still have a decent chance of being killed by multiple green mobs or green bosses (very easy mobs).
Overall it was at times difficult to hit that needed success rate unless you played solo(which required a solo class) and sat in a spot kiting mobs around. Finding a group wasn't always an easy task and it was even harder to find one that would be fairly successful at earning more experience then they lost from dying.
I don't think it's so much rose colored glasses per say with a good deal of us old timers. The problem that has arisen is rather than streamlining older systems or making them more accessible / fun that many new games just opt to get rid of them completely or effective "dumb them down" beyond what making them semi approachable would be. Systems in games now seem to be designed to approach the lowest common denominator of player as opposed to making a game have some complexities that someone actually has to learn or want to be a part of.
MMORPG crafting is a prime example of this phenomenon. It has in large part been dumbed down to the point that it feels like a deliberate after though other than maybe someone able to craft inserts for sockets etc (and even then we see drops of those items still). It has become apparent that they continue to try and target the largest market possible with a wide net of over casualizing many games to try and attract that "particular" crowd that they feel will somehow give them World of Warcraft's subscriber base.
Gone are the days of trying many new things and the industry has pretty much stagnated outside of graphics for the last decade or so while trying to "streamline" things to the mass end user to try and make the most profit possible all while failing to realize that targeting the same audience as another game (particularly in the MMORPG space) usually doesn't pan out too well as people in the mmo space may leave briefly, but tend to go right back if the game is too "the same" and it's kind of sad that we're at a point where most shoots, most mmorpgs, and most rpgs feel the "same" in their respective areas.
I think younger players don't like to hear that their games have dumbed down their respective genres, but in most cases they have. I'm all for making an intro to something easy enough, but games need to bring back some amount of complexity to their systems overall.
I don't think it's so much rose colored glasses per say with a good deal of us old timers. The problem that has arisen is rather than streamlining older systems or making them more accessible / fun that many new games just opt to get rid of them completely or effective "dumb them down" beyond what making them semi approachable would be. Systems in games now seem to be designed to approach the lowest common denominator of player as opposed to making a game have some complexities that someone actually has to learn or want to be a part of.
MMORPG crafting is a prime example of this phenomenon. It has in large part been dumbed down to the point that it feels like a deliberate after though other than maybe someone able to craft inserts for sockets etc (and even then we see drops of those items still). It has become apparent that they continue to try and target the largest market possible with a wide net of over casualizing many games to try and attract that "particular" crowd that they feel will somehow give them World of Warcraft's subscriber base.
Gone are the days of trying many new things and the industry has pretty much stagnated outside of graphics for the last decade or so while trying to "streamline" things to the mass end user to try and make the most profit possible all while failing to realize that targeting the same audience as another game (particularly in the MMORPG space) usually doesn't pan out too well as people in the mmo space may leave briefly, but tend to go right back if the game is too "the same" and it's kind of sad that we're at a point where most shoots, most mmorpgs, and most rpgs feel the "same" in their respective areas.
I think younger players don't like to hear that their games have dumbed down their respective genres, but in most cases they have. I'm all for making an intro to something easy enough, but games need to bring back some amount of complexity to their systems overall.
I think the old timer thing is a bit overstated heh. MMOs have been
around 20 years and that's about the blink of an eye in a human
lifetime. It is only enough time for one generation to be born and grow
up.
If there is one thing that really kills MMOs for me it's the
lack of creativity possible in today's games. You are directed to do
things as soon as you enter the game. You are told where to go, what to
do, and how to do it. You are told what each ability you have is for
and given examples. The devs really control your game experience to the
point that you might as well not be playing for most of the game.
It
was fun in old MMOs when there was no direction and people just had to
figure things out. This often led to things like the creation of the
holy trinity, bazaars forming in unintended places, raids forming before
the idea of raid was really invented, high level players coming into
low level zones to help low level players out with buffs, players
learning how to utilize their class abilities in unintended ways, etc.
Difficulty
and grinding was another thing and I doubt I have the energy to go
through the same grind again. I wouldn't mind if there were more of a
penalty for dying in games though. Something that would make
undertaking difficult tasks a lot more risky.
As I've already
said many times I don't like instances much. It was OK to the point
where it was just dungeons and you had to travel to them, but once it
was queue up and everyone got to rid mounts/flying mounts that killed it
for me.
I kind of liked quests in WoW until the GPS was added
in. Once the GPS was added it pretty much killed it for me. I realize
some games give you the option to turn it off, but I can't willing put
myself at a disadvantage. That seems like an oxymoron to me. I think
that's something most people just don't get.
Are we basing this purely on mmorpgs? Cause mmorpgs were never the most difficult genre to begin with.
Exactly, I can't think of a game that has been truly hard in the RPG genre as a whole, at least that I've ever played. It's always boiled down to short time to kill enemies vs long time to kill them, staying alive isn't all that hard unless you're completely underdeveloped for the encounter. Take games like NwN 1+2, neither was all that hard, the biggest challenge on higher difficulties is making sure your friends or companions don't kill you. Computer controlled enemies have always been easy. PVP is the only real area I've felt challenged in gaming.
I would say that EQ was hard compared to most games now. It was hard and tedious in most way.
I would say most games get refined down in sequels for better and worst. MMORPG is largely just a refinement of WoW as a genre. Take away the open world to make it easier to level on paths. Make game play easier and fail resistant. Give players path of least resistance conveniences at every turn. Reduce choices how players can make to their characters.
Well, we did die a lot more in EQ so it wasn't just more time consuming, it was actually harder as well (Guildwars were originally relative hard before the nerfs but not time consuming).
As for NWN 1 & 2, those games were made after games became easier around year 2000. Something huge happened there where games after the year were far easier and older games generally harder. Diablo and Diablo 2 are good examples, the first game were a lot tougher.
Baldurs gate were harder then NWN as well. Then difficulty kinda stopped for some years before getting easier again in the late 2000s.
Well, that is at least how I feel it. Baldurs gate -> NWN -> DA D1 -> D2 -> D3.
Now, BG was still not one of the harder RPGs ever made or anything but it was pretty challenging at times. I don't buy that it just is the AI, a stupid AI will of course be easier then a smart one but your relative strenght compared to the enemies matters a lot.
We could go over the concept of having to be successful more than a certain % amount to succeed, but I doubt people would listen.
If you have a 100 experience until next level, get 1 experience per level, and lose 5 experience per death you would need to kill 6 mobs successfully for every death to eventually level up.
I don't recall exactly how much experience was lost in EQ for a death, but we used to count experience in what we called bubbles (the experience bar had little rounded areas that looked like separate bubbles). It seemed like you would lose 2 to 3 bubbles when you died. I recall it taking many kills just to get one bubble. I never actually counted though.
There were hell levels that required extra experience. Many levels didn't give you any new spells or skills to use and when you did get one of those levels you still had to figure out where to buy them or how to craft them.
Then you have to take into account wandering mobs and mobs with additional aggro that might sneak up and one or two shot you.
Having to retrieve you corpse increased chance of death. Especially if you were in a dungeon when you died.
People were fairly unpredictable in a static world with no instances. One might help you and one might bring a train down on you. This again increased chance of death.
Having nothing to really guide you increased chance of death as you didn't know what was safe to kill and what wasn't until you tried. The con system often didn't help as light blue (easy mobs) could sometimes be harder than red (wipe the floor with you mobs).
Equipment was fairly difficult to come by and people wouldn't keep you in a group unless you knew what you were doing because of the steep experience penalty for dying. In reality the equipment didn't help much in most cases though as it was generally something like 2 damage 5 delay on a weapon and an upgrade would be 3 damage 5 delay or 2 damage 4 delay, etc.
Dungeons were pretty nasty places. It was easy to die if you were actually level appropriate for the dungeon. Even if you were a fair amount of levels above the dungeon you would still have a decent chance of being killed by multiple green mobs or green bosses (very easy mobs).
Overall it was at times difficult to hit that needed success rate unless you played solo(which required a solo class) and sat in a spot kiting mobs around. Finding a group wasn't always an easy task and it was even harder to find one that would be fairly successful at earning more experience then they lost from dying.
Yes, I would say people simply understate the how harsh EQ was especially compared to now. The unknown predictable variables. One mob escaping in a dungeon could mean everyone dies.
Yes, I would say people simply understate the how harsh EQ was especially compared to now. The unknown predictable variables. One mob escaping in a dungeon could mean everyone dies.
I think most understand it was harsh, but have no desire to go through that experience. I think most have a different idea of what is fun these days. Even I have a different idea of what is fun these days, but it doesn't appear to be current MMOs.
Yes, I agree that overall we have seen a shift in the MMORPG to make things "more convenient" The problem here is that everyone is polarized on the issue. "Dungeon Finders are bad" "Dungeon Finders are good" Well. They are both. On one hand players no longer have to find something else to do like go farm mats or something while they spam chat looking for a healer or tank. But at the same time, there is a loss of connection with players on a server. There is a level of anonymity in games now. But older MMOS. I knew the people on my servers. Or at least I knew who they were. But there has also been a 3rd factor that's been injected into the mix and that is monetization.
As with everything some aspects are better some aren't. The difference is. What aspects appeal to what players? For me, I find that I identify more often with the older factors than the newer. But that's not an absolute. There are a lot of things I enjoy in some of the newer MMORPGS.
Congratulations, you've equipped your piece of armor, here's 75% of a level worth of XP as a reward.
Talk to Landry Stormbrother for your next quest. (Who the hell is that???)
Click HERE to autopath to Landry. He will be identified with a yellow question mark.
Landry: Congratulations, you're really getting the hang of it. Here's 33% of a level worth of XP as a reward.
I'm going to need you to pick up 4 glass bottles in my shop. They will have sparkles floating through the air above them, click on them and return to me.
Congratulations, you're the best assistant I've ever had.
I've used the 4 glass bottles to create 10 health potions for you. They will restore 3x your maximum health. Here's 33% more xp of your level for your hardship in assisting me with making potions for you.
Funnily enough I still prefer your example over something like:
Kill skeleton Kill skeleton Kill skeleton Kill skeleton Kill skeleton 100X Oh wow look, sword +1 Kill skeleton Kill skeleton Kill skeleton 100X Get killed, lose xp you gained the last 10 hours killing those skeletons.
Pretty much the only thing I agree with is that Morrowind is a much better game then Skyrim or Oblivion (hated both). I also think a lot of people here confuse 'streamlined' with 'dumbed down' and 'accessible' with 'simple.'
/Cheers, Lahnmir
'the only way he could nail it any better is if he used a cross.'
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
I wish someone would make a complex MMORPG with depth and challenging gameplay for Linux only. Linux users generally love their OS and knowing everyone in the game uses Linux would result in an awesome community I think. Anyone using Linux automatically has the prerequisites to play a more 'hardcore' MMORPG that requires patience and dedication since that is what's required for Linux as well.
Linux is on the rise with all the nonsense Microsoft are doing with Windows 10, I think an MMORPG going Linux only would get a lot of support from that community if it was the right type of game. The Linux community now reminds me of how the gaming community in general used to be back in the days of the oldschool MMORPGs. Smartphones opened the gaming community to a much broader audience and from my perspective that seems to be what is driving this trend towards 'dumbed down' games.
Even I have a different idea of what is fun these days, but it doesn't appear to be current MMOs.
It is silly to judge the whole genre, instead of games individually. Sure there are MMOs that are not fun .. but not all of them are the same.
Personally i find Marvel Heroes fun, for example.
They are usually the same game mechanics with different artwork and sounds.
Generally what you get in game is an outside world which is partially instanced. There is where all the leveling and quests ! and GPS are done.
Then there are group areas instanced off for PvE group/raid, finally there are various PvP implementations which are again instanced off.
Combat generally consists of pressing a few buttons. It's rare you actually have to use terrain/movement speed to your advantage. You are usually locked into a specific rotation in combat that you are shown during the course of the game depending on what talents you pick during the leveling process.
I forgot to add mounts rampant everywhere you look in the outside world.
To me it doesn't seem like variety. That is every game I've played since World of Warcraft.
They are usually the same game mechanics with different artwork and sounds.
To me it doesn't seem like variety. That is every game I've played since World of Warcraft.
well ... apparently you have not played many.
Let's just talk about combat mechanics .. since combat is 99% of these games.
Marvel Heroes .. diablo-ish combat, with special mechanics including leeching power from other NPCs (Rogue), straight up DPS range & melee (iron man), teleport attacks (Night crawler) .. and so on ....
Warframe ... 3rd person shooter combat.
Star Conflict ... action space ship combat
STO ... capital space combat that facing can be important (and i admit the ground combat is wow-like)
.... now I am not disputing there are games where mechanics are like wow .. but here are some examples that the mechanics are drastically different. So they are there. You just don't seem to be paying attention.
They are usually the same game mechanics with different artwork and sounds.
To me it doesn't seem like variety. That is every game I've played since World of Warcraft.
well ... apparently you have not played many.
Let's just talk about combat mechanics .. since combat is 99% of these games.
Marvel Heroes .. diablo-ish combat, with special mechanics including leeching power from other NPCs (Rogue), straight up DPS range & melee (iron man), teleport attacks (Night crawler) .. and so on ....
Warframe ... 3rd person shooter combat.
Star Conflict ... action space ship combat
STO ... capital space combat that facing can be important (and i admit the ground combat is wow-like)
.... now I am not disputing there are games where mechanics are like wow .. but here are some examples that the mechanics are drastically different. So they are there. You just don't seem to be paying attention.
Hmm
Having melee and ranged attacks doesn't mean you use any real strategy other than what you are told to by the developer.
Out of that list I would say 2 are an MMO and only STO is a bit different from the norm, but even that is fairly like the others in terms of ground combat. Spaceships are a bit different.
Let's just talk about combat mechanics .. since combat is 99% of these games.
Marvel Heroes .. diablo-ish combat, with special mechanics including leeching power from other NPCs (Rogue), straight up DPS range & melee (iron man), teleport attacks (Night crawler) .. and so on ....
Warframe ... 3rd person shooter combat.
Star Conflict ... action space ship combat
STO ... capital space combat that facing can be important (and i admit the ground combat is wow-like)
.... now I am not disputing there are games where mechanics are like wow .. but here are some examples that the mechanics are drastically different. So they are there. You just don't seem to be paying attention.
MMOs can be anything. FPS, RTS, RPG, Turn based, simulations. They can be instanced or not, persistent/non persistent.
Claiming MMOs have to only include certain mechanics is like saying single player games can only contain certain mechanics.
MMO is not a genre, it's a delivery method if anything.
We could go over the concept of having to be successful more than a certain % amount to succeed, but I doubt people would listen.
If you have a 100 experience until next level, get 1 experience per level, and lose 5 experience per death you would need to kill 6 mobs successfully for every death to eventually level up.
I don't recall exactly how much experience was lost in EQ for a death, but we used to count experience in what we called bubbles (the experience bar had little rounded areas that looked like separate bubbles). It seemed like you would lose 2 to 3 bubbles when you died. I recall it taking many kills just to get one bubble. I never actually counted though.
There were hell levels that required extra experience. Many levels didn't give you any new spells or skills to use and when you did get one of those levels you still had to figure out where to buy them or how to craft them.
Then you have to take into account wandering mobs and mobs with additional aggro that might sneak up and one or two shot you.
Having to retrieve you corpse increased chance of death. Especially if you were in a dungeon when you died.
People were fairly unpredictable in a static world with no instances. One might help you and one might bring a train down on you. This again increased chance of death.
Having nothing to really guide you increased chance of death as you didn't know what was safe to kill and what wasn't until you tried. The con system often didn't help as light blue (easy mobs) could sometimes be harder than red (wipe the floor with you mobs).
Equipment was fairly difficult to come by and people wouldn't keep you in a group unless you knew what you were doing because of the steep experience penalty for dying. In reality the equipment didn't help much in most cases though as it was generally something like 2 damage 5 delay on a weapon and an upgrade would be 3 damage 5 delay or 2 damage 4 delay, etc.
Dungeons were pretty nasty places. It was easy to die if you were actually level appropriate for the dungeon. Even if you were a fair amount of levels above the dungeon you would still have a decent chance of being killed by multiple green mobs or green bosses (very easy mobs).
Overall it was at times difficult to hit that needed success rate unless you played solo(which required a solo class) and sat in a spot kiting mobs around. Finding a group wasn't always an easy task and it was even harder to find one that would be fairly successful at earning more experience then they lost from dying.
I am well aware of the death penalty but losing XP when you die doesn't actually affect the difficulty unless you truly suck, it just forces you to kill more mobs and if those mobs are easy to kill then it is still easy. If they are hard it is hard.
I started before EQ in Meridian 59 myself... So I ain't exactly a noob. But yopu still can make a game that takes forever and still is easy or a quick game that is hard.
And yeah, EQ was pretty hard. I don't think it was the hardest PvE MMO but still one of the harder, my point is that you can't confuse hard and time consuming. We seen many games that forces you to wade through hordes of time consuming trashmobs that do little damage but all take at least some time killing.
Everything wasn't better in the past and neither were everything worse.
Some things were good with the early games, more or less anyone could make one back then and the diversity was awesome on machines like the C-64. Some games were close to im possible while others were easy, just take your pick of the type of game you enjoyed and your preferable difficulty and there were loads of games for you.
That part is far worse today, most games have about the same difficulty and the variation is nowhere near the old level.
On the plus side are games way better looking, you can play with friends who are on a different location and unlike the C-64 is not 99% of all games pirate copies anymore.
The problem with the new school fans is that they never played the old games. The problem with old schoolers is that they tend to either have rose colored glasses about the past or a problem with enjoying current games for what they are.
But I really wish someone could make a modern computer that like the C-64 anyone could make a fun game for. Some of the best games ever made were made by a single guy who were bored, Tetris for example. An yeah, you more or less can on cellphones but it isn't the same thing (or it is me being old, mobile games never really worked for me, dunno why).
I don't think so man. The barrier of entry to game creation was huge "back then". Learning assembly, C, and C++ was not something available to all. Even after the internet got going that sort of knowledge wasn't widely available. Console kits were extremely expensive.
Many new games have multiple modes of play including exploration mode and hardcore "delete my game save" mode. Back then it was either play the game "as is" or don't play it. Most didn't offer those sorts of options then.
There are a lot of free or very cheap game engines available for hobbyists and budding developers. Easy access to development tools has never been better.
I agree about veteran rose colored glasses and with younger gamers missing out on an experience in time that can't be replicated, but I think gaming is better now than ever. More options, more access, more games both old and new.
Still, almost all C-64 games were made by 1-5 people. The average devs for a basic game today are many times that number. We took courses in programing at the time.
Modern games usually takes large teams and loads of invested money (with a few exceptions like Minecraft). At the time there were hundreds of new games each month for the C-64, now we are happy with 20 or so. And yes, many of the hundreds of games sucked but the majority of the games today suck as well.
I don't think games are better or worse now, but there are fewer new ones and publishing houses are deciding what games will be made instead of gamers.
The music industry have gone the opposite way, in the 80s the record companies decided if your band would necome a hit or not. Today with youtube and the far lowered price to record a album you only need talent (or good looks) to become a hit.
I don't think it is good for gaming that a few publishers and financers decide what games should be made and not because financial people don't care about gaming and just copy whatever that sells.
Yes, I would say people simply understate the how harsh EQ was especially compared to now. The unknown predictable variables. One mob escaping in a dungeon could mean everyone dies.
I think most understand it was harsh, but have no desire to go through that experience. I think most have a different idea of what is fun these days. Even I have a different idea of what is fun these days, but it doesn't appear to be current MMOs.
You'll see a lot of people say EQ isn't hard just tedious. I think its just revisionist history.
Modern MMORPG experience is just too predictable and too bland. Before you log on you pretty much know what you're going to do.
Yes, I would say people simply understate the how harsh EQ was especially compared to now. The unknown predictable variables. One mob escaping in a dungeon could mean everyone dies.
I think most understand it was harsh, but have no desire to go through that experience. I think most have a different idea of what is fun these days. Even I have a different idea of what is fun these days, but it doesn't appear to be current MMOs.
You'll see a lot of people say EQ isn't hard just tedious. I think its just revisionist history.
Modern MMORPG experience is just too predictable and too bland. Before you log on you pretty much know what you're going to do.
I agree and I think it's intended. They want to make everyone feel like they are able to do something in game and they don't want anyone to feel lost. It also has to do with control as the games are so strict in terms of what you can and can't do and what path to follow during the game that players can't really get in a situation out of their control. I think that is a difference in society from the time original MMOs were made to now. There are a lot more people trying to control others with strict rules both in game and out of game.
Funnily enough I still prefer your example over something like:
Kill skeleton Kill skeleton Kill skeleton Kill skeleton Kill skeleton 100X Oh wow look, sword +1 Kill skeleton Kill skeleton Kill skeleton 100X Get killed, lose xp you gained the last 10 hours killing those skeletons.
Pretty much the only thing I agree with is that Morrowind is a much better game then Skyrim or Oblivion (hated both). I also think a lot of people here confuse 'streamlined' with 'dumbed down' and 'accessible' with 'simple.'
/Cheers, Lahnmir
Totally agree.
People complaining about modern gameplay are simply ignoring the fact that earlier games -- and especially early MMORPGs -- weren't exactly bastions of game depth.
This is even more true of the OP's criticism of fast travel. With endless skeleton grinding at least there's some gameplay there. With slow travel, you simply watch a tedious run animation with the barest hint of mob-avoidance gameplay. Incredibly shallow.
I'm certainly not saying all modern games are deep. Most aren't.
But when depth stares players in the face, a lot of players look at the wrong metrics and make incorrect assumptions like, "The number of abilities my WOW class has is fewer this expansion, therefore my class must be dumbed down." Meanwhile in spite of fewer abilities, the actual nuance involved in the better WOW rotations is as intricate as it's ever been! So the depth of WOW is as high as it's ever been, and I'm aware of only one playstyle in any other MMORPG (FFXIV's Lancer rotation) which achieves similar depth.
It'd be nice if everyone looked at things with a scientific/objective perspective, but that's not how people generally work. And so you get 'dumbed down' flung as an insult, typically by players who enjoy games which were legitimately quite shallow.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Are we basing this purely on mmorpgs? Cause mmorpgs were never the most difficult genre to begin with.
Exactly, I can't think of a game that has been truly hard in the RPG genre as a whole, at least that I've ever played. It's always boiled down to short time to kill enemies vs long time to kill them, staying alive isn't all that hard unless you're completely underdeveloped for the encounter. Take games like NwN 1+2, neither was all that hard, the biggest challenge on higher difficulties is making sure your friends or companions don't kill you. Computer controlled enemies have always been easy. PVP is the only real area I've felt challenged in gaming.
I would say that EQ was hard compared to most games now. It was hard and tedious in most way.
I would say most games get refined down in sequels for better and worst. MMORPG is largely just a refinement of WoW as a genre. Take away the open world to make it easier to level on paths. Make game play easier and fail resistant. Give players path of least resistance conveniences at every turn. Reduce choices how players can make to their characters.
Well, we did die a lot more in EQ so it wasn't just more time consuming, it was actually harder as well (Guildwars were originally relative hard before the nerfs but not time consuming).
As for NWN 1 & 2, those games were made after games became easier around year 2000. Something huge happened there where games after the year were far easier and older games generally harder. Diablo and Diablo 2 are good examples, the first game were a lot tougher.
Baldurs gate were harder then NWN as well. Then difficulty kinda stopped for some years before getting easier again in the late 2000s.
Well, that is at least how I feel it. Baldurs gate -> NWN -> DA D1 -> D2 -> D3.
Now, BG was still not one of the harder RPGs ever made or anything but it was pretty challenging at times. I don't buy that it just is the AI, a stupid AI will of course be easier then a smart one but your relative strenght compared to the enemies matters a lot.
To me hard means it takes a lot of practice to be good... RPG's really aren't about that, they're more about building stats. Which is just time consuming, not exactly hard. Dying a lot in a game like EQ is more about the stats and numbers behind the scenes (the variables in dice rolls).
Same goes for older games like BG, NWN so and and so forth. Contrast that to something like Divinity original sin, or Wasteland 2 (modern RPGs) they require far more strategy than games of the past, especially D:OS... Tactics play far more of a role than they did in older games of the sort (say compared to FO 1+2).
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Ninelives is in alpha stage and i've been playing it alot. This topic made me think about something that happened in the game. The game has no levels just skills that you pick and rank up as you get stronger. Its a game where you can go anywhere and explore the game world. But unlike skyrim there's no level scaling. So i was killing these bugs in the first zone i was in and they are getting easy. Zoned in to the next zone and saw the same kind of bugs but they were more armor plated and with spikes. One of those suckers wiped the floor with me and i was smiling. Just like it was in Morrowind. Think your pretty tough then go in a ruin and get you butt handed to you. Now that's old school.
You'll see a lot of people say EQ isn't hard just tedious. I think its just revisionist history.
what is so hard camping the same mob over and over and over again? I take a number and wait to get help in grocery stores too. Is that challenging now?
Comments
If you have a 100 experience until next level, get 1 experience per level, and lose 5 experience per death you would need to kill 6 mobs successfully for every death to eventually level up.
I don't recall exactly how much experience was lost in EQ for a death, but we used to count experience in what we called bubbles (the experience bar had little rounded areas that looked like separate bubbles). It seemed like you would lose 2 to 3 bubbles when you died. I recall it taking many kills just to get one bubble. I never actually counted though.
There were hell levels that required extra experience. Many levels didn't give you any new spells or skills to use and when you did get one of those levels you still had to figure out where to buy them or how to craft them.
Then you have to take into account wandering mobs and mobs with additional aggro that might sneak up and one or two shot you.
Having to retrieve you corpse increased chance of death. Especially if you were in a dungeon when you died.
People were fairly unpredictable in a static world with no instances. One might help you and one might bring a train down on you. This again increased chance of death.
Having nothing to really guide you increased chance of death as you didn't know what was safe to kill and what wasn't until you tried. The con system often didn't help as light blue (easy mobs) could sometimes be harder than red (wipe the floor with you mobs).
Equipment was fairly difficult to come by and people wouldn't keep you in a group unless you knew what you were doing because of the steep experience penalty for dying. In reality the equipment didn't help much in most cases though as it was generally something like 2 damage 5 delay on a weapon and an upgrade would be 3 damage 5 delay or 2 damage 4 delay, etc.
Dungeons were pretty nasty places. It was easy to die if you were actually level appropriate for the dungeon. Even if you were a fair amount of levels above the dungeon you would still have a decent chance of being killed by multiple green mobs or green bosses (very easy mobs).
Overall it was at times difficult to hit that needed success rate unless you played solo(which required a solo class) and sat in a spot kiting mobs around. Finding a group wasn't always an easy task and it was even harder to find one that would be fairly successful at earning more experience then they lost from dying.
It's all about options. Some people want dumb and some want smarter. Just research and you'll get the game you want.
I personally think "hard mode" should be added to mmo's. Esp if the mmo doesn't allow modding.
My dream game:
-Quest flags: bad
-Dungeon group finders: Good.
-Getting to end game in 2 weeks: Awful
-Monthly fee over F2P Pay2Win
-More than a couple of builds per class
-Best gear by crafting with ingredients from hard dungeons.
MMORPG crafting is a prime example of this phenomenon. It has in large part been dumbed down to the point that it feels like a deliberate after though other than maybe someone able to craft inserts for sockets etc (and even then we see drops of those items still). It has become apparent that they continue to try and target the largest market possible with a wide net of over casualizing many games to try and attract that "particular" crowd that they feel will somehow give them World of Warcraft's subscriber base.
Gone are the days of trying many new things and the industry has pretty much stagnated outside of graphics for the last decade or so while trying to "streamline" things to the mass end user to try and make the most profit possible all while failing to realize that targeting the same audience as another game (particularly in the MMORPG space) usually doesn't pan out too well as people in the mmo space may leave briefly, but tend to go right back if the game is too "the same" and it's kind of sad that we're at a point where most shoots, most mmorpgs, and most rpgs feel the "same" in their respective areas.
I think younger players don't like to hear that their games have dumbed down their respective genres, but in most cases they have. I'm all for making an intro to something easy enough, but games need to bring back some amount of complexity to their systems overall.
If there is one thing that really kills MMOs for me it's the lack of creativity possible in today's games. You are directed to do things as soon as you enter the game. You are told where to go, what to do, and how to do it. You are told what each ability you have is for and given examples. The devs really control your game experience to the point that you might as well not be playing for most of the game.
It was fun in old MMOs when there was no direction and people just had to figure things out. This often led to things like the creation of the holy trinity, bazaars forming in unintended places, raids forming before the idea of raid was really invented, high level players coming into low level zones to help low level players out with buffs, players learning how to utilize their class abilities in unintended ways, etc.
Difficulty and grinding was another thing and I doubt I have the energy to go through the same grind again. I wouldn't mind if there were more of a penalty for dying in games though. Something that would make undertaking difficult tasks a lot more risky.
As I've already said many times I don't like instances much. It was OK to the point where it was just dungeons and you had to travel to them, but once it was queue up and everyone got to rid mounts/flying mounts that killed it for me.
I kind of liked quests in WoW until the GPS was added in. Once the GPS was added it pretty much killed it for me. I realize some games give you the option to turn it off, but I can't willing put myself at a disadvantage. That seems like an oxymoron to me. I think that's something most people just don't get.
"Dungeon Finders are bad" "Dungeon Finders are good"
Well. They are both. On one hand players no longer have to find something else to do like go farm mats or something while they spam chat looking for a healer or tank. But at the same time, there is a loss of connection with players on a server. There is a level of anonymity in games now. But older MMOS. I knew the people on my servers. Or at least I knew who they were. But there has also been a 3rd factor that's been injected into the mix and that is monetization.
As with everything some aspects are better some aren't. The difference is. What aspects appeal to what players? For me, I find that I identify more often with the older factors than the newer. But that's not an absolute. There are a lot of things I enjoy in some of the newer MMORPGS.
Kill skeleton
Kill skeleton
Kill skeleton
Kill skeleton
Kill skeleton 100X
Oh wow look, sword +1
Kill skeleton
Kill skeleton
Kill skeleton 100X
Get killed, lose xp you gained the last 10 hours killing those skeletons.
Pretty much the only thing I agree with is that Morrowind is a much better game then Skyrim or Oblivion (hated both). I also think a lot of people here confuse 'streamlined' with 'dumbed down' and 'accessible' with 'simple.'
/Cheers,
Lahnmir
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
Personally i find Marvel Heroes fun, for example.
Linux is on the rise with all the nonsense Microsoft are doing with Windows 10, I think an MMORPG going Linux only would get a lot of support from that community if it was the right type of game. The Linux community now reminds me of how the gaming community in general used to be back in the days of the oldschool MMORPGs. Smartphones opened the gaming community to a much broader audience and from my perspective that seems to be what is driving this trend towards 'dumbed down' games.
Generally what you get in game is an outside world which is partially instanced. There is where all the leveling and quests ! and GPS are done.
Then there are group areas instanced off for PvE group/raid, finally there are various PvP implementations which are again instanced off.
Combat generally consists of pressing a few buttons. It's rare you actually have to use terrain/movement speed to your advantage. You are usually locked into a specific rotation in combat that you are shown during the course of the game depending on what talents you pick during the leveling process.
I forgot to add mounts rampant everywhere you look in the outside world.
To me it doesn't seem like variety. That is every game I've played since World of Warcraft.
Let's just talk about combat mechanics .. since combat is 99% of these games.
Marvel Heroes .. diablo-ish combat, with special mechanics including leeching power from other NPCs (Rogue), straight up DPS range & melee (iron man), teleport attacks (Night crawler) .. and so on ....
Warframe ... 3rd person shooter combat.
Star Conflict ... action space ship combat
STO ... capital space combat that facing can be important (and i admit the ground combat is wow-like)
.... now I am not disputing there are games where mechanics are like wow .. but here are some examples that the mechanics are drastically different. So they are there. You just don't seem to be paying attention.
Having melee and ranged attacks doesn't mean you use any real strategy other than what you are told to by the developer.
Out of that list I would say 2 are an MMO and only STO is a bit different from the norm, but even that is fairly like the others in terms of ground combat. Spaceships are a bit different.
Claiming MMOs have to only include certain mechanics is like saying single player games can only contain certain mechanics.
MMO is not a genre, it's a delivery method if anything.
I started before EQ in Meridian 59 myself... So I ain't exactly a noob. But yopu still can make a game that takes forever and still is easy or a quick game that is hard.
And yeah, EQ was pretty hard. I don't think it was the hardest PvE MMO but still one of the harder, my point is that you can't confuse hard and time consuming. We seen many games that forces you to wade through hordes of time consuming trashmobs that do little damage but all take at least some time killing.
Still, almost all C-64 games were made by 1-5 people. The average devs for a basic game today are many times that number. We took courses in programing at the time.
Modern games usually takes large teams and loads of invested money (with a few exceptions like Minecraft). At the time there were hundreds of new games each month for the C-64, now we are happy with 20 or so. And yes, many of the hundreds of games sucked but the majority of the games today suck as well.
I don't think games are better or worse now, but there are fewer new ones and publishing houses are deciding what games will be made instead of gamers.
The music industry have gone the opposite way, in the 80s the record companies decided if your band would necome a hit or not. Today with youtube and the far lowered price to record a album you only need talent (or good looks) to become a hit.
I don't think it is good for gaming that a few publishers and financers decide what games should be made and not because financial people don't care about gaming and just copy whatever that sells.
Modern MMORPG experience is just too predictable and too bland. Before you log on you pretty much know what you're going to do.
People complaining about modern gameplay are simply ignoring the fact that earlier games -- and especially early MMORPGs -- weren't exactly bastions of game depth.
This is even more true of the OP's criticism of fast travel. With endless skeleton grinding at least there's some gameplay there. With slow travel, you simply watch a tedious run animation with the barest hint of mob-avoidance gameplay. Incredibly shallow.
I'm certainly not saying all modern games are deep. Most aren't.
But when depth stares players in the face, a lot of players look at the wrong metrics and make incorrect assumptions like, "The number of abilities my WOW class has is fewer this expansion, therefore my class must be dumbed down." Meanwhile in spite of fewer abilities, the actual nuance involved in the better WOW rotations is as intricate as it's ever been! So the depth of WOW is as high as it's ever been, and I'm aware of only one playstyle in any other MMORPG (FFXIV's Lancer rotation) which achieves similar depth.
It'd be nice if everyone looked at things with a scientific/objective perspective, but that's not how people generally work. And so you get 'dumbed down' flung as an insult, typically by players who enjoy games which were legitimately quite shallow.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Same goes for older games like BG, NWN so and and so forth. Contrast that to something like Divinity original sin, or Wasteland 2 (modern RPGs) they require far more strategy than games of the past, especially D:OS... Tactics play far more of a role than they did in older games of the sort (say compared to FO 1+2).
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Tedious ... that is the definition of tedious.