To be honest, I find almost EVERYTHING in life to be easy.
I don't mean to boast, only to be realistic. Out of all of my friends and family, I am always the best gamer. Rather it's FPS shooters, RTS strategy, or MMORPG aggro management or PvP.
I have quick reflexes, an incredibly fast memory, and a high IQ & EQ. I find absolutely ANY task- whether it's work, school, or play- to be easy. In fact, there's nothing I have ever tried to accomplish that I did not find easy. Nothing I couldn't learn very quickly. I skim through 800 page books ONCE and pass final exams. I never (literally, never) study but MAYBE 10 minutes before tests and rarely go to class in college and I pass with A's and B's. I also have over 10 years of gaming experience in all types of video games, a precision mouse & mousepad, etc.
It doesn't matter what the PvP is like, it's easy for me to get top kills, kickass builds, or win despite having a gimped spec. It usually takes me no less than a few hours, and no more than a week, to learn the game mechanics enough to goto the top.
I say all of that to say this: Difficulty is relative.
To people like me, the only CHALLENGE we will ever face is in PvP, and it has to be handicapping ourselves (a gimped spec) against an overpowered Flavor of the Month spec. Rather that, or facing off against some of the best; which is extremely rare.
PvP is the only difficult thing I find in MMO's. PvE is always easy, or a toss-up between "Crap, I have to run away... but I dont want to. Yep, I died just like I predicted, but oh well!" But dying bc 3 extra mob groups aggro you is usually just a mistake if it's my fault (which it usually isn't) or dying bc the tank forgot that I, the healer, need protecting- or that I the tank need healing, etc.
So to me nothing has changed except the destruction of time-sinks and crappy game mechanics. The difficulty is still the exact same as it has always been: easy. That doesn't mean I don't die a lot, and it doesn't mean I learn from my mistakes and I'm not insane repeated the same illogical behaviors in PvE. It does mean that I no longer have to WASTE 3 hours of my life just to play 1 hour of a video game. This is a good thing.
And the former poster is right! New players to MMO's will find even the easy content difficult. Everyone does at first, it's called a learning curve. The first time I went through the Champions Online tutorial- I almost died. I don't know if they nerfed the difficulty before I did it a 2nd time or not- but the 2nd time through it was a JOKE how easy it was because I had so much more experience.
So I don't get it... with as many people out there irked that MMO's are too easy, isn't EVE Online the "final solution"?
A game that is said to take 1 week to learn HOW TO EVEN PLAY is EXTREMELY off-putting.
Why would I want to waste my time learning for a week just to have fun? My personality is a "GIVE ME FUN NOW!!!!!!!!!" type personality. For me to actually acrue the patience to wait to have fun... well for me that just sounds insane!
The #1 thing I hate the most about MMO's is the fact you have to grind (or "learn") usually until max level- before you can even begin playing.
Any game that takes 1 week to learn or 1 month to get to max level "where the fun REALLY begins" is a game I never want to play. Making the fun start at END GAME is the most idiotic thing a developer could do. Especially if it takes a month to reach end-game.
Plus... EvE just seems too sterile... too impersonal, and thus not immersive. Give me my own character, or give personality to my entire crew- and THEN I will fall in love with my spaceship. Not before. I love Star Trek because of the Captain and Crew. Not because of the nameless, faceless ship.
Yes, MMOs are getting much easier as the genre grows. It's a double-edged sword, being great for some folks and horrible for others. It wouldn't be so much of a problem if there were plenty of challenging games, of quality, that people could choose from.. but there are so few and they are incredibly niche.
I'm more or less frustrated with the idea that a MMO must be about one thing and one thing only, with no room for deviation. Most high-fantasy MMOs are all about "progression", be it slow or fast, and moving from area to area 'conquering' your foes. This is fine, but where is a game that has some of the progression factor but brings me an actual World?
Too many games just skip over all the details. What's the point of spending 6 months designing a large city or town if you're just going to populate it with NPCs that stand still and do nothing. All these buildings that you can't go into, all these "taverns" that serve no purpose, where you go inside and just look at how empty it is, how all the NPCs just stare at the wall... It's almost horrible.
If I enter a game and realize I can't sit down in a chair, I'll probably find myself quitting soon, because it's a clue to a lack of detail. Why can't I go into a persistent world and sit down with a buddy in a tavern? Park at a table, an NPC comes over, you order some ale that actually makes you "drunk". You look at the table and realize you can play poker, dice, some obscure game.. anything, in real-time with your buddy's character looking back at you. After you get tired of playing the game at the table, you can walk over to a game of darts, billiards, what have you, or you can walk outside and throw axes at a target.
If I'm to believe that the world I pay to "live in" is a real-world then make it feel like one for phuck's sake. What's "mysterious" and "adventurous" about a huge dragon or raid boss if every single player can kill it and move on like it's a carnival game?
Create a world, then make the game. In a MMO, you can't have one without the other. The world needs to do something other than "look pretty".
FFXI is most noticeably the most difficult and challenging MMO out there right now. A lot of people have been playing for more than 6 years and have still not completed everything that needs to be done. This included the hardcore player-base.
Yes, unfortunately. But from a business perspective, that's where the money is. The spoiled kids with short attention span and high pocket money.
"Our" games were different back when mmorpg was a niche genre. When these games were made by gamers for gamers -and appreciated by gamers instead of getting "consumed" by brats and idiots. As of today, the development is driven by investors aiming for bluckbuster-titles, with companies and jobs depending on financial managers. "innovation in gaming" nowadays has nothing to do with new concepts or mechanisms in the game itself, but it means to "invent new business models", "reach new target audiences" = making more cash.
The veteran's times are over. Until the spirit of the players changes again, which i doubt it'll do in this ever faster turning downward spiral called "modern world".
FFXI is most noticeably the most difficult and challenging MMO out there right now. A lot of people have been playing for more than 6 years and have still not completed everything that needs to be done. This included the hardcore player-base.
but FFXI is pre wow, Post WoW mmo's are the problem.
Waiting for:EQ-Next, ArcheAge (not so much anymore) Now Playing: N/A Worst MMO: FFXIV Favorite MMO: FFXI
It's a good thing we don't have tedious stuff like huge levelling grinds and xp loss anymore. We need more rock hard bosses though. I thought original WoW did it quite well, with easy levelling but some extremely hard raid bosses. I think a game like that but without the the whole WoW-style simplicity (e.g. mash-one-button combat, kiddie-friendly plot and setting) is the way forward. Playing EQ2 now. It's a bit like that, the engine isn't polished enough to be popular though.
First of all I'd just like to say that I'm mainly talking about the PvE aspect of MMOs, the PvP aspect tends to be much more dynamic, although things could probably be improved there as well.
Also you can have difficult content and easy content coexist in the same world, I don't see why a game has to be just hard or just easy, a persistent game WORLD should have all kinds of challenge levels.
Some people seem to think that difficulty is directly related to time spent, which it in some cases are, but does not have to be. I think difficulty is about providing challenges, not timesinks. Take a boss for example, what would you do to make it harder? Maybe add some more hitpoints, some more spawns, more damage and more attacks. You'd have a more difficult opponent no doubt, but once a viable strategy has been figured out to beat it, it's no longer about challenging the boss, it's about who can most robotically perform the strategy's instructions.
Another way to increase the difficulty of a boss is making it smarter. I believe that developers should focus on developing the AI of the bosses and mobs. This might be a gargantuan task considering that this has not been the focus traditionally, but looking at the achievements the game industry has made since the start it would no doubt be achieveable. Give the enemy the ability to take choices based on which classes you have in your group, where people are standing, and give it a subtle edge of unpredictability, so that people have to improvise if things go wrong. Give the enemy a personality, not a script.
Consider the satisfaction of outsmarting an opponent vs. the satisfaction of outhealing an opponent.
MMO's aren't easier. They're just less tedious, less time consuming and more focused on providing challenge without unnecessarily harsh penalties for failure.
Agreed. Most hardships of old didn't have anything to do with difficult. Even if it were, the difficulty of a boss mob adds or takes little for how much I enjoy a game.
So I don't get it... with as many people out there irked that MMO's are too easy, isn't EVE Online the "final solution"?
A game that is said to take 1 week to learn HOW TO EVEN PLAY is EXTREMELY off-putting.
Why would I want to waste my time learning for a week just to have fun? My personality is a "GIVE ME FUN NOW!!!!!!!!!" type personality. For me to actually acrue the patience to wait to have fun... well for me that just sounds insane!
The #1 thing I hate the most about MMO's is the fact you have to grind (or "learn") usually until max level- before you can even begin playing.
Any game that takes 1 week to learn or 1 month to get to max level "where the fun REALLY begins" is a game I never want to play. Making the fun start at END GAME is the most idiotic thing a developer could do. Especially if it takes a month to reach end-game.
Plus... EvE just seems too sterile... too impersonal, and thus not immersive. Give me my own character, or give personality to my entire crew- and THEN I will fall in love with my spaceship. Not before. I love Star Trek because of the Captain and Crew. Not because of the nameless, faceless ship.
People like you are the problem. You want to completely understand a game within a week, and then you complain that the game is too unchallenging because you can beat it within a week. In other words, what you think want is not really what you actually want. The problem is that people have been conditioned by years of single-player games to expect to be special, unique, awesome. But of course, not everyone in an MMO can be a hero, and the bland, easy formulaic MMOs that try and make every player a hero (if only they will grind for long enough or buy enough goodies from the item shop) are catering to this false mindset. There is a deep and lasting satisfaction to be gained from mastering a truly complex, challenging, uncompromising player-driven game. Once you've tasted it, you'll never be satisfied with the cheap saccharine rewards of the "easy" games.
Oh and by the way, EvE takes years to learn how to play. I've been playing since Sept 2006, and I have only mastered a small part of the possible aspects of gameplay. Point taken about the 'impersonality' of EvE, though. That is a legitimate criticism. Obvously it doesn't bother the people who are playing it now, but it is one of the most frequent reasons I hear people say "Oh it's a fantatic game but I don't play it becase....". When the Incarna expansion hits the server next year, drop on by. I'm expecting that we'll be seeing a population boom in New Eden next year.
Now, I'll ask a few simple questions and state a few facts about EVE.
So you want your game to be harder right? You want to be hardcore right? Okay fair enough, so let's take wow for example and see how this goes.
Remember back in Beta when Onyxia came out? She was hard and it took several tries to get it right... Within 3 or 4 months of practicing, my guild was competing with other guilds on how fast we could do the encounter. This means, 8 minutes... from 45 minutes to 8 minutes. The same went for Molten Core and etc... It's hard alright but after a while, you know the tricks and it becomes pretty easy.
In my opinion, the issue is, there is no harder or easier on MMOs. Everything in an MMO is about time and that's about it.
Time to learn how to properly conquer an odd or time to properly grind... whatever, it's time. Darkfall or Ultima Online or EQ... No difference, it's all about time. Sure, some mobs are made to be killed in a group and what do we hear? Kitting technique, exploits and such. After a certain amount of time, everything becomes easy. It's the reason some players prefer PVP.
MMOs are all about patterns.It's like playing old NES Mario or Mega Man.
SO how do you make the encounters harder but still fun and worth the time?
heh, I have no idea but so far, I don't even think it's possible until we start seing Unreal Tournament type of AI.
EVE-Online
When will people realize that a 3 million Skillpoints character (3 months old) can kick the ass of an 90 miliion skillpoints if played right. There is not a single ship in the game that requires every single skills you have. Most ships requires the core basics and then a specialized skill or two.
You can PVP and actually kill people on DAY 1 if you're smart and courageous enough. Obviously a noob frigate is still a noob frigate. When I fly with my alliance, I am as powerfull as any other interceptor pilots... some are 3 months old, others are 5 years old and I'm 3 and half year old. it doesn't make a difference, we all use the same 12 skills. The difference is that I've seen and fought many more battles then a 3 month old. I know exactly how my ship handles and what can be done or not during a combat situation. The 5 year old player probably knows even more then me.
So I don't get it... with as many people out there irked that MMO's are too easy, isn't EVE Online the "final solution"?
A game that is said to take 1 week to learn HOW TO EVEN PLAY is EXTREMELY off-putting.
Why would I want to waste my time learning for a week just to have fun? My personality is a "GIVE ME FUN NOW!!!!!!!!!" type personality. For me to actually acrue the patience to wait to have fun... well for me that just sounds insane!
The #1 thing I hate the most about MMO's is the fact you have to grind (or "learn") usually until max level- before you can even begin playing.
Any game that takes 1 week to learn or 1 month to get to max level "where the fun REALLY begins" is a game I never want to play. Making the fun start at END GAME is the most idiotic thing a developer could do. Especially if it takes a month to reach end-game.
Plus... EvE just seems too sterile... too impersonal, and thus not immersive. Give me my own character, or give personality to my entire crew- and THEN I will fall in love with my spaceship. Not before. I love Star Trek because of the Captain and Crew. Not because of the nameless, faceless ship.
Sorry, needed to ask, what do you mean by "off-putting"
Also just a statement, I learned how to move the peaces of a chess board in 10 mins. But I have never stopped leaning how to play the game. Are you saying that you need to be the Viswanathan Anand of the MMO world in 1 month to have fun?
..its a guideline, not a rule, as players we must remember: Its a Game.
Really? It is not hard when only <2% of the players ever clear Sunwell?
haha the challenge of raiding was rarely the battles... it was finding 20-40 other halfway decent players and then getting them to all to clear their schedule so they can all log on and spend their whole night raiding.
This whole thread is kinda messed up. If you want a game with a pretty decent challenge, try Vendetta Online or Darkfall. EvE isn't the final solution. Why? Combat takes skill and learning, but honestly, from what I saw of EvE, it's not all that deep and it's the same auto-attack crap. EvE is a gaming marvel, but it's still a game and it's still got it's cons.
Yes, both Vendetta and Darkfall are extremely niche games and yes, they're both still trying to implement all the features they've wanted in the game. Why did I choose them? They've got twitch-based combat and both show a more hardcore side of that twitch-based combat than you'd think and both are completely open-ended with limitless amounts of things to do with factioned PvP between 3 races, they're expansive, and well...they're twitch-based, which i something the "hardcore crowd" wants but never gravitates towards because it ends up being too hard or they just claim hackz. The games also have pretty engaging communities. DF has a lot of PKing but it's part of the game and PKing is for more than just personal glory.
What I'm honestly waiting on is the current-gen Clan Lord. Clan Lord was great in it's time. You determined your class by training under certain trainers, the training was extensive and took work, to survive, all classes were needed. You HAD to work together to survive. It was THE community MMORPG. Shame no one has extended on the idea.
EDIT: to the "give me fun now" guy: Go back to FPSs. If you're going to play an MMO that you're going to pay monthly for, you should be glad that it takes a month to learn so that you know what you're doing and there's a lot to do. If you just got the fun right then and there, then why would you even want to play after the first week, let alone the first month? I still don't understand why people play WoW or games like it. It's literally the same thing with a different skin the whole way through the game with maybe a few distractions, but mostly just more of the same. I seriously see no motivation to play to lvl 10, let alone lvl 80. Especially since they nerfed everything and you can start out fighting an enemy a lvl over you and lose so little health that you gain it back over the walk to the next one. Where's the fun or challenge in that? That's just plain boring.
MMO's aren't easier. They're just less tedious, less time consuming and more focused on providing challenge without unnecessarily harsh penalties for failure.
MMO's aren't easier. They're just less tedious, less time consuming and more focused on providing challenge without unnecessarily harsh penalties for failure.
Sounds like the definition of easier to me.
QFT.
Also, Ilvaldyr, most of the challenge was the tediousness. It was making sure everything was perfect so that you were at maximum efficiency. Planning was key. Nowadays, most MMOs (obvious exceptions aside...I don't want any "EvE doesn't do that" responses...) handle your stats for you. Where's the challenge there? You're automatically the best you can be. Without the "tedious planning and training" where's the REAL challenge?
The challenge of sport isn't the drive to the arena or getting a team together... its the actual match. Why anyone would want a developer to make the former difficult to make the "match" challenging is retarded. Yes the heroic versions of content should require people to bring their A game, no the casual version shouldn't. You don't need to be a professional athlete to enjoy sport, no reason you should need to be professional gamer to enjoy the content of an MMO.
Hell if people really wanted challenge they would gasp run content early :O But what most "too easy" people want is to be the only one running around in shiny gear
MMO's aren't easier. They're just less tedious, less time consuming and more focused on providing challenge without unnecessarily harsh penalties for failure.
Sounds like the definition of easier to me.
QFT.
Also, Ilvaldyr, most of the challenge was the tediousness. It was making sure everything was perfect so that you were at maximum efficiency. Planning was key. Nowadays, most MMOs (obvious exceptions aside...I don't want any "EvE doesn't do that" responses...) handle your stats for you. Where's the challenge there? You're automatically the best you can be. Without the "tedious planning and training" where's the REAL challenge?
it scares me that anyone would find tedious planning and training fun, i don't play a GAME to be bored waiting for people to get on and do something, i'd rather go read a book and be entertained for my money.
having come from eq, where raiding is largely the main focus still, i wouldn't play any new mmos that focus on raiding or time sinks to make more money, like that anymore.
of course mmos seem easier, because the gaming companies for the most part have seen that forced time sinks piss people off more than they keep people playing.
12 years ago you were lucky to find one or two mmo type games, so we were willing to put up with nonsense like hell levels(i do mean hell) and deaths being dangerous, you either did or you didn't play any mmos for the first year or so, other than UO.
now? not so much, now that we have more companies out to make the next big thing and making a game for people willing to pay, there is no way the "vision" would fit in this post wow world and if they tried it, you wouldn't have a player base long.
it just comes down to the mmo paying customer being more discerning and less afraid of not being in on the big thing, after all most mmo players were going "this is so awesome to play in such immersion, that it doesn't bother me that i have to sit in one spot for 3 hours or more and get screwed by the game designers!"
MMO's aren't easier. They're just less tedious, less time consuming and more focused on providing challenge without unnecessarily harsh penalties for failure.
Sounds like the definition of easier to me.
QFT.
Also, Ilvaldyr, most of the challenge was the tediousness. It was making sure everything was perfect so that you were at maximum efficiency. Planning was key. Nowadays, most MMOs (obvious exceptions aside...I don't want any "EvE doesn't do that" responses...) handle your stats for you. Where's the challenge there? You're automatically the best you can be. Without the "tedious planning and training" where's the REAL challenge?
it scares me that anyone would find tedious planning and training fun, i don't play a GAME to be bored waiting for people to get on and do something, i'd rather go read a book and be entertained for my money.
I also find regular console RPGs like Persona, Chrono Trigger and the first six Final Fantasy games where tedious planning is necessary to beat the game fun. There's obviously a market. Your point?
Luminary: Rise of the GoonZu may look cartoonish with its primitive 2D graphics but it takes a lot of social skills to progress in it. Its quests alone can be quite a chore too.
I am simply myself, no more and no less. And I only want to be free.
Now, I'll ask a few simple questions and state a few facts about EVE.
So you want your game to be harder right? You want to be hardcore right? Okay fair enough, so let's take wow for example and see how this goes. Remember back in Beta when Onyxia came out? She was hard and it took several tries to get it right... Within 3 or 4 months of practicing, my guild was competing with other guilds on how fast we could do the encounter. This means, 8 minutes... from 45 minutes to 8 minutes. The same went for Molten Core and etc... It's hard alright but after a while, you know the tricks and it becomes pretty easy.
In my opinion, the issue is, there is no harder or easier on MMOs. Everything in an MMO is about time and that's about it. Time to learn how to properly conquer an odd or time to properly grind... whatever, it's time. Darkfall or Ultima Online or EQ... No difference, it's all about time. Sure, some mobs are made to be killed in a group and what do we hear? Kitting technique, exploits and such. After a certain amount of time, everything becomes easy. It's the reason some players prefer PVP. MMOs are all about patterns.It's like playing old NES Mario or Mega Man. SO how do you make the encounters harder but still fun and worth the time? heh, I have no idea but so far, I don't even think it's possible until we start seing Unreal Tournament type of AI.
EVE-Online When will people realize that a 3 million Skillpoints character (3 months old) can kick the ass of an 90 miliion skillpoints if played right. There is not a single ship in the game that requires every single skills you have. Most ships requires the core basics and then a specialized skill or two. You can PVP and actually kill people on DAY 1 if you're smart and courageous enough. Obviously a noob frigate is still a noob frigate. When I fly with my alliance, I am as powerfull as any other interceptor pilots... some are 3 months old, others are 5 years old and I'm 3 and half year old. it doesn't make a difference, we all use the same 12 skills. The difference is that I've seen and fought many more battles then a 3 month old. I know exactly how my ship handles and what can be done or not during a combat situation. The 5 year old player probably knows even more then me.
always lol at that graphic.
Post pretty much summed up my point, especially with seeing the "patterns" part. Once you know how the magic tricks work, they're not so "magic" anymore, or any other trick based off the ones you know.
"There is only one thing of which I am certain, and that's nothing is certain."
Games haven't gotten "easier". They lessened on harsh penalties that are time consuming and annoying. Arcade games used them to eat up quarters. Now there are some games out there that have gone more "mainstream" and tend to be easier. Want to know why? It means more sells. The game industry has gotten bigger and more people are playing games today. If they were to hard and unfair, many would be turned off because "it's just a game, spending all this time TRYING to beat it won't mean a darn thing anyway.."
No one game should be HARD. Like Demons Souls. It's getting all these rave reviews, yet I believe if they allowed more Difficulty settings, they would probably sell more copies. (Though I think the only selling point of that game is the hardness of it..)
There should be choices of difficulty each person can chose. If they want the game or dungeon to
Comments
To be honest, I find almost EVERYTHING in life to be easy.
I don't mean to boast, only to be realistic. Out of all of my friends and family, I am always the best gamer. Rather it's FPS shooters, RTS strategy, or MMORPG aggro management or PvP.
I have quick reflexes, an incredibly fast memory, and a high IQ & EQ. I find absolutely ANY task- whether it's work, school, or play- to be easy. In fact, there's nothing I have ever tried to accomplish that I did not find easy. Nothing I couldn't learn very quickly. I skim through 800 page books ONCE and pass final exams. I never (literally, never) study but MAYBE 10 minutes before tests and rarely go to class in college and I pass with A's and B's. I also have over 10 years of gaming experience in all types of video games, a precision mouse & mousepad, etc.
It doesn't matter what the PvP is like, it's easy for me to get top kills, kickass builds, or win despite having a gimped spec. It usually takes me no less than a few hours, and no more than a week, to learn the game mechanics enough to goto the top.
I say all of that to say this: Difficulty is relative.
To people like me, the only CHALLENGE we will ever face is in PvP, and it has to be handicapping ourselves (a gimped spec) against an overpowered Flavor of the Month spec. Rather that, or facing off against some of the best; which is extremely rare.
PvP is the only difficult thing I find in MMO's. PvE is always easy, or a toss-up between "Crap, I have to run away... but I dont want to. Yep, I died just like I predicted, but oh well!" But dying bc 3 extra mob groups aggro you is usually just a mistake if it's my fault (which it usually isn't) or dying bc the tank forgot that I, the healer, need protecting- or that I the tank need healing, etc.
So to me nothing has changed except the destruction of time-sinks and crappy game mechanics. The difficulty is still the exact same as it has always been: easy. That doesn't mean I don't die a lot, and it doesn't mean I learn from my mistakes and I'm not insane repeated the same illogical behaviors in PvE. It does mean that I no longer have to WASTE 3 hours of my life just to play 1 hour of a video game. This is a good thing.
And the former poster is right! New players to MMO's will find even the easy content difficult. Everyone does at first, it's called a learning curve. The first time I went through the Champions Online tutorial- I almost died. I don't know if they nerfed the difficulty before I did it a 2nd time or not- but the 2nd time through it was a JOKE how easy it was because I had so much more experience.
A game that is said to take 1 week to learn HOW TO EVEN PLAY is EXTREMELY off-putting.
Why would I want to waste my time learning for a week just to have fun? My personality is a "GIVE ME FUN NOW!!!!!!!!!" type personality. For me to actually acrue the patience to wait to have fun... well for me that just sounds insane!
The #1 thing I hate the most about MMO's is the fact you have to grind (or "learn") usually until max level- before you can even begin playing.
Any game that takes 1 week to learn or 1 month to get to max level "where the fun REALLY begins" is a game I never want to play. Making the fun start at END GAME is the most idiotic thing a developer could do. Especially if it takes a month to reach end-game.
Plus... EvE just seems too sterile... too impersonal, and thus not immersive. Give me my own character, or give personality to my entire crew- and THEN I will fall in love with my spaceship. Not before. I love Star Trek because of the Captain and Crew. Not because of the nameless, faceless ship.
Yes, MMOs are getting much easier as the genre grows. It's a double-edged sword, being great for some folks and horrible for others. It wouldn't be so much of a problem if there were plenty of challenging games, of quality, that people could choose from.. but there are so few and they are incredibly niche.
I'm more or less frustrated with the idea that a MMO must be about one thing and one thing only, with no room for deviation. Most high-fantasy MMOs are all about "progression", be it slow or fast, and moving from area to area 'conquering' your foes. This is fine, but where is a game that has some of the progression factor but brings me an actual World?
Too many games just skip over all the details. What's the point of spending 6 months designing a large city or town if you're just going to populate it with NPCs that stand still and do nothing. All these buildings that you can't go into, all these "taverns" that serve no purpose, where you go inside and just look at how empty it is, how all the NPCs just stare at the wall... It's almost horrible.
If I enter a game and realize I can't sit down in a chair, I'll probably find myself quitting soon, because it's a clue to a lack of detail. Why can't I go into a persistent world and sit down with a buddy in a tavern? Park at a table, an NPC comes over, you order some ale that actually makes you "drunk". You look at the table and realize you can play poker, dice, some obscure game.. anything, in real-time with your buddy's character looking back at you. After you get tired of playing the game at the table, you can walk over to a game of darts, billiards, what have you, or you can walk outside and throw axes at a target.
If I'm to believe that the world I pay to "live in" is a real-world then make it feel like one for phuck's sake. What's "mysterious" and "adventurous" about a huge dragon or raid boss if every single player can kill it and move on like it's a carnival game?
Create a world, then make the game. In a MMO, you can't have one without the other. The world needs to do something other than "look pretty".
FFXI is most noticeably the most difficult and challenging MMO out there right now. A lot of people have been playing for more than 6 years and have still not completed everything that needs to be done. This included the hardcore player-base.
"MMOs are becoming too easy"
Yes, unfortunately. But from a business perspective, that's where the money is. The spoiled kids with short attention span and high pocket money.
"Our" games were different back when mmorpg was a niche genre. When these games were made by gamers for gamers -and appreciated by gamers instead of getting "consumed" by brats and idiots. As of today, the development is driven by investors aiming for bluckbuster-titles, with companies and jobs depending on financial managers. "innovation in gaming" nowadays has nothing to do with new concepts or mechanisms in the game itself, but it means to "invent new business models", "reach new target audiences" = making more cash.
The veteran's times are over. Until the spirit of the players changes again, which i doubt it'll do in this ever faster turning downward spiral called "modern world".
but FFXI is pre wow, Post WoW mmo's are the problem.
Waiting for:EQ-Next, ArcheAge (not so much anymore)
Now Playing: N/A
Worst MMO: FFXIV
Favorite MMO: FFXI
It's a good thing we don't have tedious stuff like huge levelling grinds and xp loss anymore. We need more rock hard bosses though. I thought original WoW did it quite well, with easy levelling but some extremely hard raid bosses. I think a game like that but without the the whole WoW-style simplicity (e.g. mash-one-button combat, kiddie-friendly plot and setting) is the way forward. Playing EQ2 now. It's a bit like that, the engine isn't polished enough to be popular though.
First of all I'd just like to say that I'm mainly talking about the PvE aspect of MMOs, the PvP aspect tends to be much more dynamic, although things could probably be improved there as well.
Also you can have difficult content and easy content coexist in the same world, I don't see why a game has to be just hard or just easy, a persistent game WORLD should have all kinds of challenge levels.
Some people seem to think that difficulty is directly related to time spent, which it in some cases are, but does not have to be. I think difficulty is about providing challenges, not timesinks. Take a boss for example, what would you do to make it harder? Maybe add some more hitpoints, some more spawns, more damage and more attacks. You'd have a more difficult opponent no doubt, but once a viable strategy has been figured out to beat it, it's no longer about challenging the boss, it's about who can most robotically perform the strategy's instructions.
Another way to increase the difficulty of a boss is making it smarter. I believe that developers should focus on developing the AI of the bosses and mobs. This might be a gargantuan task considering that this has not been the focus traditionally, but looking at the achievements the game industry has made since the start it would no doubt be achieveable. Give the enemy the ability to take choices based on which classes you have in your group, where people are standing, and give it a subtle edge of unpredictability, so that people have to improvise if things go wrong. Give the enemy a personality, not a script.
Consider the satisfaction of outsmarting an opponent vs. the satisfaction of outhealing an opponent.
Agreed. Most hardships of old didn't have anything to do with difficult. Even if it were, the difficulty of a boss mob adds or takes little for how much I enjoy a game.
A game that is said to take 1 week to learn HOW TO EVEN PLAY is EXTREMELY off-putting.
Why would I want to waste my time learning for a week just to have fun? My personality is a "GIVE ME FUN NOW!!!!!!!!!" type personality. For me to actually acrue the patience to wait to have fun... well for me that just sounds insane!
The #1 thing I hate the most about MMO's is the fact you have to grind (or "learn") usually until max level- before you can even begin playing.
Any game that takes 1 week to learn or 1 month to get to max level "where the fun REALLY begins" is a game I never want to play. Making the fun start at END GAME is the most idiotic thing a developer could do. Especially if it takes a month to reach end-game.
Plus... EvE just seems too sterile... too impersonal, and thus not immersive. Give me my own character, or give personality to my entire crew- and THEN I will fall in love with my spaceship. Not before. I love Star Trek because of the Captain and Crew. Not because of the nameless, faceless ship.
People like you are the problem. You want to completely understand a game within a week, and then you complain that the game is too unchallenging because you can beat it within a week. In other words, what you think want is not really what you actually want. The problem is that people have been conditioned by years of single-player games to expect to be special, unique, awesome. But of course, not everyone in an MMO can be a hero, and the bland, easy formulaic MMOs that try and make every player a hero (if only they will grind for long enough or buy enough goodies from the item shop) are catering to this false mindset. There is a deep and lasting satisfaction to be gained from mastering a truly complex, challenging, uncompromising player-driven game. Once you've tasted it, you'll never be satisfied with the cheap saccharine rewards of the "easy" games.
Oh and by the way, EvE takes years to learn how to play. I've been playing since Sept 2006, and I have only mastered a small part of the possible aspects of gameplay. Point taken about the 'impersonality' of EvE, though. That is a legitimate criticism. Obvously it doesn't bother the people who are playing it now, but it is one of the most frequent reasons I hear people say "Oh it's a fantatic game but I don't play it becase....". When the Incarna expansion hits the server next year, drop on by. I'm expecting that we'll be seeing a population boom in New Eden next year.
Give me liberty or give me lasers
First, I'll present this graphic here.
Now, I'll ask a few simple questions and state a few facts about EVE.
So you want your game to be harder right? You want to be hardcore right? Okay fair enough, so let's take wow for example and see how this goes.
Remember back in Beta when Onyxia came out? She was hard and it took several tries to get it right... Within 3 or 4 months of practicing, my guild was competing with other guilds on how fast we could do the encounter. This means, 8 minutes... from 45 minutes to 8 minutes. The same went for Molten Core and etc... It's hard alright but after a while, you know the tricks and it becomes pretty easy.
In my opinion, the issue is, there is no harder or easier on MMOs. Everything in an MMO is about time and that's about it.
Time to learn how to properly conquer an odd or time to properly grind... whatever, it's time. Darkfall or Ultima Online or EQ... No difference, it's all about time. Sure, some mobs are made to be killed in a group and what do we hear? Kitting technique, exploits and such. After a certain amount of time, everything becomes easy. It's the reason some players prefer PVP.
MMOs are all about patterns.It's like playing old NES Mario or Mega Man.
SO how do you make the encounters harder but still fun and worth the time?
heh, I have no idea but so far, I don't even think it's possible until we start seing Unreal Tournament type of AI.
EVE-Online
When will people realize that a 3 million Skillpoints character (3 months old) can kick the ass of an 90 miliion skillpoints if played right. There is not a single ship in the game that requires every single skills you have. Most ships requires the core basics and then a specialized skill or two.
You can PVP and actually kill people on DAY 1 if you're smart and courageous enough. Obviously a noob frigate is still a noob frigate. When I fly with my alliance, I am as powerfull as any other interceptor pilots... some are 3 months old, others are 5 years old and I'm 3 and half year old. it doesn't make a difference, we all use the same 12 skills. The difference is that I've seen and fought many more battles then a 3 month old. I know exactly how my ship handles and what can be done or not during a combat situation. The 5 year old player probably knows even more then me.
A game that is said to take 1 week to learn HOW TO EVEN PLAY is EXTREMELY off-putting.
Why would I want to waste my time learning for a week just to have fun? My personality is a "GIVE ME FUN NOW!!!!!!!!!" type personality. For me to actually acrue the patience to wait to have fun... well for me that just sounds insane!
The #1 thing I hate the most about MMO's is the fact you have to grind (or "learn") usually until max level- before you can even begin playing.
Any game that takes 1 week to learn or 1 month to get to max level "where the fun REALLY begins" is a game I never want to play. Making the fun start at END GAME is the most idiotic thing a developer could do. Especially if it takes a month to reach end-game.
Plus... EvE just seems too sterile... too impersonal, and thus not immersive. Give me my own character, or give personality to my entire crew- and THEN I will fall in love with my spaceship. Not before. I love Star Trek because of the Captain and Crew. Not because of the nameless, faceless ship.
Sorry, needed to ask, what do you mean by "off-putting"
Also just a statement, I learned how to move the peaces of a chess board in 10 mins. But I have never stopped leaning how to play the game. Are you saying that you need to be the Viswanathan Anand of the MMO world in 1 month to have fun?
..its a guideline, not a rule, as players we must remember: Its a Game.
Really? It is not hard when only <2% of the players ever clear Sunwell?
Really? It is not hard when only <2% of the players ever clear Sunwell?
haha the challenge of raiding was rarely the battles... it was finding 20-40 other halfway decent players and then getting them to all to clear their schedule so they can all log on and spend their whole night raiding.
Hahaha exactly what I was thinking!
This whole thread is kinda messed up. If you want a game with a pretty decent challenge, try Vendetta Online or Darkfall. EvE isn't the final solution. Why? Combat takes skill and learning, but honestly, from what I saw of EvE, it's not all that deep and it's the same auto-attack crap. EvE is a gaming marvel, but it's still a game and it's still got it's cons.
Yes, both Vendetta and Darkfall are extremely niche games and yes, they're both still trying to implement all the features they've wanted in the game. Why did I choose them? They've got twitch-based combat and both show a more hardcore side of that twitch-based combat than you'd think and both are completely open-ended with limitless amounts of things to do with factioned PvP between 3 races, they're expansive, and well...they're twitch-based, which i something the "hardcore crowd" wants but never gravitates towards because it ends up being too hard or they just claim hackz. The games also have pretty engaging communities. DF has a lot of PKing but it's part of the game and PKing is for more than just personal glory.
What I'm honestly waiting on is the current-gen Clan Lord. Clan Lord was great in it's time. You determined your class by training under certain trainers, the training was extensive and took work, to survive, all classes were needed. You HAD to work together to survive. It was THE community MMORPG. Shame no one has extended on the idea.
EDIT: to the "give me fun now" guy: Go back to FPSs. If you're going to play an MMO that you're going to pay monthly for, you should be glad that it takes a month to learn so that you know what you're doing and there's a lot to do. If you just got the fun right then and there, then why would you even want to play after the first week, let alone the first month? I still don't understand why people play WoW or games like it. It's literally the same thing with a different skin the whole way through the game with maybe a few distractions, but mostly just more of the same. I seriously see no motivation to play to lvl 10, let alone lvl 80. Especially since they nerfed everything and you can start out fighting an enemy a lvl over you and lose so little health that you gain it back over the walk to the next one. Where's the fun or challenge in that? That's just plain boring.
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Sounds like the definition of easier to me.
Sounds like the definition of easier to me.
QFT.
Also, Ilvaldyr, most of the challenge was the tediousness. It was making sure everything was perfect so that you were at maximum efficiency. Planning was key. Nowadays, most MMOs (obvious exceptions aside...I don't want any "EvE doesn't do that" responses...) handle your stats for you. Where's the challenge there? You're automatically the best you can be. Without the "tedious planning and training" where's the REAL challenge?
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The challenge of sport isn't the drive to the arena or getting a team together... its the actual match. Why anyone would want a developer to make the former difficult to make the "match" challenging is retarded. Yes the heroic versions of content should require people to bring their A game, no the casual version shouldn't. You don't need to be a professional athlete to enjoy sport, no reason you should need to be professional gamer to enjoy the content of an MMO.
Hell if people really wanted challenge they would gasp run content early :O But what most "too easy" people want is to be the only one running around in shiny gear
Sounds like the definition of easier to me.
QFT.
Also, Ilvaldyr, most of the challenge was the tediousness. It was making sure everything was perfect so that you were at maximum efficiency. Planning was key. Nowadays, most MMOs (obvious exceptions aside...I don't want any "EvE doesn't do that" responses...) handle your stats for you. Where's the challenge there? You're automatically the best you can be. Without the "tedious planning and training" where's the REAL challenge?
it scares me that anyone would find tedious planning and training fun, i don't play a GAME to be bored waiting for people to get on and do something, i'd rather go read a book and be entertained for my money.
having come from eq, where raiding is largely the main focus still, i wouldn't play any new mmos that focus on raiding or time sinks to make more money, like that anymore.
of course mmos seem easier, because the gaming companies for the most part have seen that forced time sinks piss people off more than they keep people playing.
12 years ago you were lucky to find one or two mmo type games, so we were willing to put up with nonsense like hell levels(i do mean hell) and deaths being dangerous, you either did or you didn't play any mmos for the first year or so, other than UO.
now? not so much, now that we have more companies out to make the next big thing and making a game for people willing to pay, there is no way the "vision" would fit in this post wow world and if they tried it, you wouldn't have a player base long.
it just comes down to the mmo paying customer being more discerning and less afraid of not being in on the big thing, after all most mmo players were going "this is so awesome to play in such immersion, that it doesn't bother me that i have to sit in one spot for 3 hours or more and get screwed by the game designers!"
these days not so much.
Sounds like the definition of easier to me.
QFT.
Also, Ilvaldyr, most of the challenge was the tediousness. It was making sure everything was perfect so that you were at maximum efficiency. Planning was key. Nowadays, most MMOs (obvious exceptions aside...I don't want any "EvE doesn't do that" responses...) handle your stats for you. Where's the challenge there? You're automatically the best you can be. Without the "tedious planning and training" where's the REAL challenge?
it scares me that anyone would find tedious planning and training fun, i don't play a GAME to be bored waiting for people to get on and do something, i'd rather go read a book and be entertained for my money.
I also find regular console RPGs like Persona, Chrono Trigger and the first six Final Fantasy games where tedious planning is necessary to beat the game fun. There's obviously a market. Your point?
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Luminary: Rise of the GoonZu may look cartoonish with its primitive 2D graphics but it takes a lot of social skills to progress in it. Its quests alone can be quite a chore too.
I am simply myself, no more and no less. And I only want to be free.
always lol at that graphic.
Post pretty much summed up my point, especially with seeing the "patterns" part. Once you know how the magic tricks work, they're not so "magic" anymore, or any other trick based off the ones you know.
"There is only one thing of which I am certain, and that's nothing is certain."
Games haven't gotten "easier". They lessened on harsh penalties that are time consuming and annoying. Arcade games used them to eat up quarters. Now there are some games out there that have gone more "mainstream" and tend to be easier. Want to know why? It means more sells. The game industry has gotten bigger and more people are playing games today. If they were to hard and unfair, many would be turned off because "it's just a game, spending all this time TRYING to beat it won't mean a darn thing anyway.."
No one game should be HARD. Like Demons Souls. It's getting all these rave reviews, yet I believe if they allowed more Difficulty settings, they would probably sell more copies. (Though I think the only selling point of that game is the hardness of it..)
There should be choices of difficulty each person can chose. If they want the game or dungeon to
I can get past the easy part. Its the depth that matters. Most MMOs are extremely shallow. The good ones aren't.