Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Where did the arguement that MMORPG are getting easier come from?
MMOExposed
Member RarePosts: 7,400
Where did the arguement that MMORPG are getting easier come from?
I know it cant be from World of Warcraft.
something happen today, while I was playing rift. the group tank decided to start WoW bashing, because I guess thats cool.
He said something about WoW being easier. Yet he say the highest level character he has is a level 59 hunter. LOL.
I been seeing this argument thrown around about MMORPG being too easy. But I really curious, if the people making these claims are like the Tank I had in my group, who doesnt even play. I guess a game would be easy, if you dont play it. right?
lol level 59, yet the game is easycake... lol smh
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
Comments
It came from themeparks. MMORPGs didnt get easier, they got redifined. Sheep will always follow. Probably what you ran into with the guy from rift. I guess if there isnt a bot program that will level you to cap its considered hard now? Rift was for kids imo. At least WOW got harder so adults could enjoy the gameplay too.
What does his being level 59 have anything to do with whether the game is easy or hard?
Nothing hard about Sandbox games, especially the old ones, they more like TIME SINK games, ment for people who had more than enough time in their lives to play.
Usually the:
College Student.
Unemployed.
Retired.
Old mmo's were harder back when I used to have to walk to school in 10 feet of snow, uphill both ways with no shoes on.
Nostalgia makes everything look better. Except my high-school senior picture...it's still terrible.
Some of them old schoolers would say that took skill!
Can you solo level faster now than you could?
Think about LK - there were Elites that required groups - then they did not.
Pretty clear cut example. MMORPGs are generally getting easier.
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
Explorer: 87%, Killer: 67%, Achiever: 27%, Socializer: 20%
Are you suggesting that time=difficulty? Some might argue that time=annoyance.
You see it in patch notes across all mmos: Elite mobs become reduced to non elite. Group content gets nerfed so it can be done solo. Raids and dungeons get adjusted as time goes by, offering passive buffs to players and debuffs to bosses. Experience gain and amounts get adjusted so that people can level up more quickly. That all adds up to mmos becoming easier in my book. Were they hard before? Maybe not hard per se, but more tedious and time consuming.
Nobody said they started out hard. We are just saying that they are becoming easier. Easy getting easier heh.
WoW...
Removed +heal gear and +spell damage gear, repacing it with +spell power gear. Easier because a healing caster no longer needs 2 sets of gear.
Doubled quest XP in the middle Burning Crusade. Easier because leveling got faster.
Added a dual spec system so changing specs back and forth is no longer needed.
Removed pet loyalty system making it easier for hunters to train pets.
Removed pets being tamed at their initial level replacing it with pet jumping level, making it easier to train pets.
Removed ammunition and ammunition bags, making it easier for classes who use ranged weapons to keep space open in inventory.
Removed questing for epic mounts for Warlocks and Paladins, making it easier to get the mounts.
Changed normal mounts from 40 to 20, making traveling easier.
Changed epic mounts from 60 to 40, making traveling easier.
Changed flying mounts from 70 to 60, making traveling easier.
Adding flying in Azeroth, making traveling easier.
Changed channeled heal for hunters to instant cast making it easier for hunters to keep pets healed.
Converted some of the Vanilla dungeons to shorter runs making it easier and faster to do a full run.
Added crafted BOE epics so non-raiders could have easier access to high quality gear sold on AH.
Added a cross-server dungeon finder system making it easier to find groups for dungeon runs.
Added dungeon rewards for running randoms.
Removed elite mobs from dungeon entrances.
Reworked the quest system providing easy access to location information needed to complete quests.
Reworked leveling in Cata so level cap can be achieved in significantly less time than the 240 hours which was common during BC.
Added Death Knight as hero class allowing players with high level characters to completely skip the first 58 levels.
This is just from memory. There are probably some I missed.
The problem is, to many people consider 'difficulty' with 'tediousness' and just general stuff that makes things much more of a grind. Lets not pretend it makes it harder, it doesn't. Anyone who claims things are harder because "You need to spend more time individually buffing everyone" or "You need to spend hours before a raid preparing or its to easy" are really confusing difficulty with just general time wasting.
Are games becoming easier? Yes, a lot are. Are a lot of the arguements about it being easier actually justified? No. I'm not going to even remotely pretend that for, lets say WoW (due to it being used) it was more difficult in the past getting a mount in vanilla (epic). it wasn't more difficult it just took a great deal more time to work for it. It was more time consuming, and what I did to get it wasn't hard at all.
As if anyone playing Rift right now can legitimately complain that WoW is too easy? RIft wasn't difficult to begin with and it's been nerfed multiple times since launch.
Your forgetting that most mmo's are established now. You have majority of players that are max level, making it not as easy to find a group for new or alt players leveling. The option for slow leveling is still there, but then we get those poeple complaining how it's too grindy.
So either way it's a LOSE LOSE situation.
I even gave an example.
Then - Elite mob. Hard to kill on your own.
Later - Elite mob. Can solo easily.
As for time being an annoyance for some - guess what - it's a MMORPG . . . maybe it was not the game genre for them.
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
Explorer: 87%, Killer: 67%, Achiever: 27%, Socializer: 20%
The thing that happens with this though is:
Player is Playing Game A - which has a certain difficulty, speed of leveling, etc, etc, etc. It does not matter if the game is a billion years old, Game A has set the player's expectations for when they go to Game B.
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
Explorer: 87%, Killer: 67%, Achiever: 27%, Socializer: 20%
Apparently they are coming from you.
Everything creates huge amounts of negativity on the internet, that's what the internet is for: Negativity, porn and lolcats.
None of these were HARD or took any skill to begin with.
These examples you have listed are nothing more than a convenience.
Play the game and find out. It's really quite obvious.
I don't think you read that right. It's a rhetorical question that refers to the Rift player's opinion.
I even gave an example.
Then - Elite mob. Hard to kill on your own.
Later - Elite mob. Can solo easily.
As for time being an annoyance for some - guess what - it's a MMORPG . . . maybe it was not the game genre for them.
Unless your pretty stupid! Elite Mobs usually required you to have a group.
What's was so hard about that?
Oh, the option to ask for help from others.
Again. Nobody is saying that it was hard to begin with. It was easy before, and its easier now.
Um... you do not what the definition of convenience is... in arguing that they did not make it easier.
Um... no... because then you would have used another term.
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
Explorer: 87%, Killer: 67%, Achiever: 27%, Socializer: 20%
I highlighted in orange all the points that refer to speeding up a process. My comments in green.
Almost all of points listed as things "made easier" were never hard to begin with...just tendious and annoying in my opinion.
Good morning all,
I was contemplating the Opening Post's question and came to a realization of sorts.
Does a harder game make it more fun?
Well, yes and no. A harder game provides one with a much harder challenge, thus the feeling for achievement for completing is much more of a personal reward for a player.
Secondly, it would seem that a harder game would mean certain challenges more than a match for the common grounds usually with their own rewards, rewards one can show off to everyone where it be that fancy chinese-style dragon platemail that you dyed in black (The rarest of all colours), or that extra spool before or after your name that you can display showing everyone who you are, and what demon-infested hellhole you travested in the ever-surmounting search for more powerful loot.
But then again....having a harder time to progress anywhere can be a immeasurability frustrating and crushing experience. One can simply recall games such as Ninja Gaiden to understand the meaning of the term "Gamer Rage" (And if you didn't develop a major psychopathy from it, we - the fallen - commend you.).
In conclusion, after pursuing through the comments of the fellow website users, it's clear to comprehend that generally when a game is made easier through the induction of various systems, systems that are designed to provide easier access to content or to provide a expediant experience one notices a drop in consumer sastifaction. At least, from the veterns who have played for a while.
That's what we usually call an Elitest A------!
Pretty much every MMORPG has gone through this,.... patches, expantions, changes that players love and hate. What's so new about that?
You want a challenge leveling like the old days, go and trying killing mobs 10lvls higher than you, I am sure that would bring back memories.
Checking ones that are valid, while commenting on ones that aren't or aren't really 'fair' for considering.
1.) Easier to get the gear needed to fit both speccs, though it wasn't optimal in preformance it gives. Was to really give them something if they are soloing, cause lets not pretend healers could easily blow through content like everyone else without taking extra long. Only issue I find is tanks still were left with two sets of gear.
2.) Check!
3.) Having to teleport to town to respecc each time didn't make things harder, it made it more time consuming.
4.) Loyalty was pretty much a penalty only hunters had and it more so drained time then actually increasing difficulty. Its a easy chore thats more of an annoyance then being 'difficult'. Not having to worry about this is one less tedious task out of the way. Its fine if everyone needs to worry about this, or have something equivlant to manage, last I checked, group buffs are the closest things, and you can usualyl stack 1 item up to 20 for it.
5.) Its not difficulty, its a time sink added to a hunter. Again, its fine if its something everyone has to go through, but when its just one class, it just seems stupid to force that one group to go through leveling a pet again that no one else has to worry about.
6.) Again, stupid. Its easy to buy ammo and mass stack it. It takes absolutely no skill at all at this, don't pretend this makes it harder, it makes it annoying.
7.) Check. Should have form of questing, though I do see why it was removed seeing no one does those places anymore making it very difficult. More the designers fault then anything.
8, 9, 10, 11) Walking faster doesn't make the game easier, it makes it faster. Try again. Nice try making 2 of the same points different numbers.
10 and 11 I have issues with but not for difficulty reasons.
12.) I didn't know sitting still and watching a spell 'channel' makes it harder to play. It sounded more like you just sit there adn watcha channel go off. Sorry, 12 actually made the game 'easier' if you want to consider the fact it created a time where you could use 0 thought process at all and just watch the game play itself even more.
13.) You mean sectioned a game? Like, making it so a dungeon doesn't consume your entire life? You mean like helping with TIME? Sorry, we went over this, extra time =/= difficulty.
14.) Half check? Why? Because you still need to get the money for it. Guess what, that money takes time that you claim to be difficulty. None the less, I do have gripes about this for other reasons, half check just cause it does in some way allow someone who doesn't 'raid' to get some good gear.
15.) Sorry, conveinence =/= difficulty. If it did, a trip to the DMV would be considered the hardest raid in RL
16.) Nope. The badges and in turn the rewards they give you make it easier (mostly in cases they give gear that would otherwise you need to actually do content for), but the random reward doesn't make it easier itself. It promotes play of dungeons people normally wouldn't do, which I don't feel is nessisarily a bad thing, but it does have issues but unrelated to difficulty.
17.) Oh boy, its so hard to run quickly past elite mobs. Thats such a huge difficulty curve in avoiding an elite. Sorry, it doesn't count as being hard.
18.)Saves time, doesn't make it harder. I would check this, but lets not pretend places like thotbot didn't exist before they added in those features. It saves on effort in figuring where things are but its still information that could easily be looked up.
19.) 240 hours? What are you smoking? Anyways, outside your random and insane number you made up, the cata rework adjusted quests, it didn't actually do anything to speed it up. I leveled in Cata roughly as fast as I did in Wotlk. Also, time =/= difficulty.
2 of your points I consider valid while half of one is sort of valid. Everything else has very little to do with difficulty, more to do with time investment. As I mentioned above, if you feel time is what makes things hard, go visit your local dmv daily and encounter the hardest raid in RL you can ever do!