Longer answer is NO, becuase games are moving away from huge open world to streamlined group content matching, much like FPS have done for years. Devs are finding that people want to play "Right fucking now" and if you can jam people together via a tool then they get what they want.
I don't think we will be seeing community driven games fora bit. There will be more a more quick match macking small map games coming out. They are cheaper to develop and focus more on instant "fun" and rewards.
I hope I am wrong. It just seems like that is the way things are going.
“It's unwise to pay too much, but it's worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money - that's all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot - it can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better.”
I hate 90% of all mmo's. Some I played around with for more than 30 days....But the bottom line is that I really liked three mmo's.
Vanilla WoW - for me it was hard because I had no one to ask questions. No one at work, no one in my social life. I had to figure out everything myself. I had to ask in chat where to go after level 10, I had figure out trainers for abilities and how to equip them. It was very hard because I had to stick with other players to learn. Players were teaching me stuff well into the 40's. Infact I was in my mid 20's when I found out about group dungeons. I got a /tell out of the blue to do ShadowFang Keep, then bammm I was in a group of 5 running to the entrance....They were the fun days.
D&D Online - Before F2P, I made a healer and found I was good at it. Groups loved me as I was passionate about it. I knew everyone on my server.
Vanguard - Was hard, but to survive you had to make friends...IT has a community because of it.
EvE - I guess is good, but not my style.
EQ2 - I guess it could be hard, but the game is a mess, it always has been, with its nasty coding, below adv. graphics and pasted together maps.
Something tells me GW2 will be easy mode too. It looks fun and all with it's WvWvW PvP, but it also has a Rift look and feel to it. Rift was a 30 day excitement for me.
Will we ever see an extremely hard mmo ever again, where you really really need a community ?...No Dungeon finder or dynamic events to do a quickie and leave without saying a word, and think that you grouped.
I need a down and dirty, nasty hard mmo !.... I need an mmo where I need a community to survive !.....Will we ever see what I'm looking for again ?
Yes most of the games are going to super easy mode, I played Tera last weekend and that was very easy, swtor recently went to super easy mode, Vanguard continues to have challenging mobs and is certainly harder than the other games you mention, I hope when it goes f2p they dont kill it
Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny. Lao-Tze
If I gave them a copy of Mega man 1 for NES they would probably deem it unplayable. Defeat 8 bosses with 3 lives no continues. Then fight a 3-mode final boss. Yeah it was daym hard. But it was daym fun too. And nothing can take away the achievement of skill completing that game. Today you get gamer points for typing your name.
I laughed at this because it's so very true. You also left out the "Why do I have to fight all the bosses again?!" reaction you would get just before the ragequit...if they made it that far. Not to mention "Bottomless pits kill you instead of making you lose a little health and teleporting you back to the edge?! THIS IS BS!!"
I'd love to hear grown "men" and "women" complainig that this game is impossible, despite the fact that this is a game I mastered when I was 8 years old.
Don't forget the complaints you would get because you had to actually defeat the bosses to get new powers. Today you get new skills for figuring out how to visit the trainer. Imagine if Megaman had a cash shop. For $5 you can continue. For $10 you can buy any power you want. For $15 you can skip all the bosses and make it to the "end-game", the screen that says Game Over
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own. -- Herman Melville
The question is not whether it is hard. The question is whether it is FUN.
It's not fun winning all the time. Ever watch the Twilight Zone? Watch the episode "It's a Nice Place to Visit".
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own. -- Herman Melville
The question is not whether it is hard. The question is whether it is FUN.
It's not fun winning all the time. Ever watch the Twilight Zone? Watch the episode "It's a Nice Place to Visit".
No one is winning 100% ofl the time.
A game does not need to be hard to have some failure. Based on the QQing on WOW forums when CATA is first out, i will say heroics in CATA is too hard for many to have fun.
Even now, you die from time to time when you are not paying attention.
And if you play pvp in ANY game, you cannot win 100% of the time.
*And* too hard is no fun either. Just look at Sunwell. It is so hard that most people won't even attempt.
I'm not sure if it is fair to say Vanguard is hard, but rather everything else is terrifyingly easy.
The game does have a lot more group-oriented content than anything else on the market right now though. You will likely never have to run a dungeon more than once if you are the type who hates running the same thing over and over.
I doubt there will ever be another mmorpg that has that thing we are looking for.
The obvious reason is customer base changed and they are brought up on console gaming and will eat up anything presented with flashy animations and big tits. They do not wan't dept because that will take too much time in a life where they are busybusybusy doing nothing. Instant action, instant gratification, new things every day because new is always better and if you lack behind in gaming or life you loose (bull but thats the thought). This is not a "oh them kids" speech, it is just to explain why there wont be another of those mmorpg games.
But, there will probably be games that aspire to be, and their ability to handle the meeting with reality results in how close they come. This means there will be games with features you can tolerate because some of its other features are great. Perfection is in your mind and if you look at your favorite games, you will find stuff you dont like.
I keep an eye on mmorpgs just incase but real hope has been parked long ago. But there are other type of games like strategy games in open worlds or others, and maybe those are much more likely to present you with something you can enjoy. First step is to not jump on the beta train, resist the urge to preorder even if you think its just money you are loosing - Let the games proove themselves, let the facts build up and check with friends and boards before buying. This is what I am going to do with Diablo3 and GW2 for example because no one can really give valid info before having played atleast a month, and also especially new games change alot and some games are everchanging like WoW.
Also with that last thing in mind, it is quite possible to love a game for some years and then hate what it changed into - My examples of this are Everquest and WoW, and I am sure there are games that start out like crap and turn into something of you liking in time.
Last thing.. even a half bad game can become pretty good if you play it with friends (old and new).
add.. When games budgets are blown on stories, cutscenes, voiceover and flashy combat animations, it is only logical that generic long lasting content loose focus. Top that with the big coorperation way of thinking, there are no strong vision holders, they all become dynamic yes saying survivors. AND offcourse the fact that the boom in mmorpg business is mostly driven by asian companies and targeted to the asian consumers... lets face it, its a different taste of style.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned Rift in this post. While the 1-50 grind is pretty easy, the end-game content was quite challenging. Skill rotations were very difficult, the scripting for boss encounters was very complex, and you absolutely had to rely on everyone in the raid to make a 100% contribution to every fight. I actually quit playing because Hammerknell was TOO hard. It was a guild breaker...the best players in the game were raiding 40-60 hours a week trying to clear this thing for weeks. It was like stabbing yourself in the genitals with a hot iron and then trying to figure out if you did it right...then doing it again to check.
Will we see another "hard" MMO? maybe, but it will take a small studio who is not afraid to burn some bridges when it comes to PR and customer service. to pretty much say, "here is the game, our target audience, and anyone who does not like it can go play something else they do like." But in this world, for some reason, people who have yet to spend money on a product still hold incredible power over a company.
I'm not sure if it is fair to say Vanguard is hard, but rather everything else is terrifyingly easy.
The game does have a lot more group-oriented content than anything else on the market right now though. You will likely never have to run a dungeon more than once if you are the type who hates running the same thing over and over.
You make a very good point here , was Vanguard to hard or is almost every other mmo on super easy. Vanguard to me is right on the money as far as challenge goes, it keeps my interest and nudges me to group. Another poster here said that Rift was super easy from lvl 1-50 and then the end game was hard-that is fine- but who wants to go through 50 levels to get to the good stuff?
Of the more modern MMOs, Vanguard is probably the hardest (with an actual death penalty!). It is getting more development time (there were 2 patches just last week, and one a week for the past few). BUT, it is going f2p (maybe t his summer), so I know that puts a lot of people off, though I think it wil bring in some new blood.
The game still requires a group to get a lot of the "fun" stuff, though one can solo 1-51 if one wanted.
You can solo 1-55.
From level 51 on though you have to do Magi Hold - very few other places where you still can do something solo.
I hate 90% of all mmo's. Some I played around with for more than 30 days....But the bottom line is that I really liked three mmo's.
Vanilla WoW - for me it was hard because I had no one to ask questions. No one at work, no one in my social life. I had to figure out everything myself. I had to ask in chat where to go after level 10, I had figure out trainers for abilities and how to equip them. It was very hard because I had to stick with other players to learn. Players were teaching me stuff well into the 40's. Infact I was in my mid 20's when I found out about group dungeons. I got a /tell out of the blue to do ShadowFang Keep, then bammm I was in a group of 5 running to the entrance....They were the fun days.
D&D Online - Before F2P, I made a healer and found I was good at it. Groups loved me as I was passionate about it. I knew everyone on my server.
Vanguard - Was hard, but to survive you had to make friends...IT has a community because of it.
EvE - I guess is good, but not my style.
EQ2 - I guess it could be hard, but the game is a mess, it always has been, with its nasty coding, below adv. graphics and pasted together maps.
Something tells me GW2 will be easy mode too. It looks fun and all with it's WvWvW PvP, but it also has a Rift look and feel to it. Rift was a 30 day excitement for me.
Will we ever see an extremely hard mmo ever again, where you really really need a community ?...No Dungeon finder or dynamic events to do a quickie and leave without saying a word, and think that you grouped.
I need a down and dirty, nasty hard mmo !.... I need an mmo where I need a community to survive !.....Will we ever see what I'm looking for again ?
Just plain hard? no....mmos need to appeal to the masses. you can have mmos that have hard things in them, but thats it
I hate 90% of all mmo's. Some I played around with for more than 30 days....But the bottom line is that I really liked three mmo's.
Vanilla WoW - for me it was hard because I had no one to ask questions. No one at work, no one in my social life. I had to figure out everything myself. I had to ask in chat where to go after level 10, I had figure out trainers for abilities and how to equip them. It was very hard because I had to stick with other players to learn. Players were teaching me stuff well into the 40's. Infact I was in my mid 20's when I found out about group dungeons. I got a /tell out of the blue to do ShadowFang Keep, then bammm I was in a group of 5 running to the entrance....They were the fun days.
D&D Online - Before F2P, I made a healer and found I was good at it. Groups loved me as I was passionate about it. I knew everyone on my server.
Vanguard - Was hard, but to survive you had to make friends...IT has a community because of it.
EvE - I guess is good, but not my style.
EQ2 - I guess it could be hard, but the game is a mess, it always has been, with its nasty coding, below adv. graphics and pasted together maps.
Something tells me GW2 will be easy mode too. It looks fun and all with it's WvWvW PvP, but it also has a Rift look and feel to it. Rift was a 30 day excitement for me.
Will we ever see an extremely hard mmo ever again, where you really really need a community ?...No Dungeon finder or dynamic events to do a quickie and leave without saying a word, and think that you grouped.
I need a down and dirty, nasty hard mmo !.... I need an mmo where I need a community to survive !.....Will we ever see what I'm looking for again ?
Just plain hard? no....mmos need to appeal to the masses. you can have mmos that have hard things in them, but thats it
No they really dont need to appeal to the cancer. We did just fine without them before, things have only gone downhill for the genre as witnessed in the plethora of multi million dollar WoW clone duds.
People always say they want a hard MMO but they never stay. When EQ opened up classic servers it was the same thing...everyone said before the server opened how awesome it would be.
First thread on the forums "How come it takes 50 mobs to get to level 2? Do you expect us to have no life?"..and 1 week later the server is empty and everyone who said they wanted a hard MMO had their excuse ready, they have a job, kids, responsibilities. So do people who play Korean grinders or played EQ, they just don't have ADD.
Out of 10 people who say they want a hard MMO, 1 will stay and 9 will leave within the first week. That's why there's very few hard or slow MMO. Expectations changed, people expect, no they demand, to be max level within a few months instead of a year or more.
Chatting inside the game used to be the reason to play a game, the community, how fast you leveled didn't matter to most people, it wasn't a race, that's why it was so easy to tolerate a huge grind of a game, leveling wasn't important, it just happened.
Players used to gather just to chat with each other, it didn't matter if you wasted a whole day chatting in the city without xp, it took ages to level anyway, so you might as well get to know people right. A grind isn't really a grind anymore when you spend 90% of your time talking to other people.
By the time I actually got to vanguard I thought it was a great game, sadly it released so badly absolutely no one was playing it or was willing to give it another chance. Count me as one that would love to play another Vanguard type game so long as the release wasn't the same.
What exactly is so hard about games like EQ and Vanguard? Not a single of the games on your list is hard to play.
EVE takes a lot of time to get into so I guess and there's tons of stuff to consider so that can be considered hard. But Vanguard? EQ? Really?
Its not that those games wrere hard, they just weren't Macdolalds style mmos, they were at least chilis..............does that analogy make any sense, it does to me right now, but I should have been asleep hours and hours ago.
What exactly is so hard about games like EQ and Vanguard? Not a single of the games on your list is hard to play.
EVE takes a lot of time to get into so I guess and there's tons of stuff to consider so that can be considered hard. But Vanguard? EQ? Really?
Vanguard wasn't hard, but original EQ was hard as nails compared to current games, even Eve.
If you want an example, EQ's expansion Gates of Discord was unbeaten until after the next expansion 1 year later because no one could do it. Imagine if an expansion of WoW was so hard to progress that players gave up on the current expansion, waited a year, bought another expansion, just to beat the old one, I don't think that would go down very well.
WoW was actually developed by people who come from guilds that were killed by GoD (Gates of Discord). Fires of Heaven, Afterlife, all those WoW guilds, are guilds that gave up on EQ because of how hard GoD was.
I hate 90% of all mmo's. Some I played around with for more than 30 days....But the bottom line is that I really liked three mmo's.
Vanilla WoW - for me it was hard because I had no one to ask questions. No one at work, no one in my social life. I had to figure out everything myself. I had to ask in chat where to go after level 10, I had figure out trainers for abilities and how to equip them. It was very hard because I had to stick with other players to learn. Players were teaching me stuff well into the 40's. Infact I was in my mid 20's when I found out about group dungeons. I got a /tell out of the blue to do ShadowFang Keep, then bammm I was in a group of 5 running to the entrance....They were the fun days.
D&D Online - Before F2P, I made a healer and found I was good at it. Groups loved me as I was passionate about it. I knew everyone on my server.
Vanguard - Was hard, but to survive you had to make friends...IT has a community because of it.
EvE - I guess is good, but not my style.
EQ2 - I guess it could be hard, but the game is a mess, it always has been, with its nasty coding, below adv. graphics and pasted together maps.
Something tells me GW2 will be easy mode too. It looks fun and all with it's WvWvW PvP, but it also has a Rift look and feel to it. Rift was a 30 day excitement for me.
Will we ever see an extremely hard mmo ever again, where you really really need a community ?...No Dungeon finder or dynamic events to do a quickie and leave without saying a word, and think that you grouped.
I need a down and dirty, nasty hard mmo !.... I need an mmo where I need a community to survive !.....Will we ever see what I'm looking for again ?
Just plain hard? no....mmos need to appeal to the masses. you can have mmos that have hard things in them, but thats it
No they really dont need to appeal to the cancer. We did just fine without them before, things have only gone downhill for the genre as witnessed in the plethora of multi million dollar WoW clone duds.
you need a reality check. mmo developers are in it to make money...why on earth should they develop a game that will only appeal to a few?
Comments
Short answer is NO.
Longer answer is NO, becuase games are moving away from huge open world to streamlined group content matching, much like FPS have done for years. Devs are finding that people want to play "Right fucking now" and if you can jam people together via a tool then they get what they want.
I don't think we will be seeing community driven games fora bit. There will be more a more quick match macking small map games coming out. They are cheaper to develop and focus more on instant "fun" and rewards.
I hope I am wrong. It just seems like that is the way things are going.
--John Ruskin
Yes most of the games are going to super easy mode, I played Tera last weekend and that was very easy, swtor recently went to super easy mode, Vanguard continues to have challenging mobs and is certainly harder than the other games you mention, I hope when it goes f2p they dont kill it
Watch your thoughts; they become words.
Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become character.
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.
Lao-Tze
Don't forget the complaints you would get because you had to actually defeat the bosses to get new powers. Today you get new skills for figuring out how to visit the trainer. Imagine if Megaman had a cash shop. For $5 you can continue. For $10 you can buy any power you want. For $15 you can skip all the bosses and make it to the "end-game", the screen that says Game Over
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
-- Herman Melville
It's not fun winning all the time. Ever watch the Twilight Zone? Watch the episode "It's a Nice Place to Visit".
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
-- Herman Melville
I'm not going to link anything or explain.
No one is winning 100% ofl the time.
A game does not need to be hard to have some failure. Based on the QQing on WOW forums when CATA is first out, i will say heroics in CATA is too hard for many to have fun.
Even now, you die from time to time when you are not paying attention.
And if you play pvp in ANY game, you cannot win 100% of the time.
*And* too hard is no fun either. Just look at Sunwell. It is so hard that most people won't even attempt.
I'm not sure if it is fair to say Vanguard is hard, but rather everything else is terrifyingly easy.
The game does have a lot more group-oriented content than anything else on the market right now though. You will likely never have to run a dungeon more than once if you are the type who hates running the same thing over and over.
I doubt there will ever be another mmorpg that has that thing we are looking for.
The obvious reason is customer base changed and they are brought up on console gaming and will eat up anything presented with flashy animations and big tits. They do not wan't dept because that will take too much time in a life where they are busybusybusy doing nothing. Instant action, instant gratification, new things every day because new is always better and if you lack behind in gaming or life you loose (bull but thats the thought). This is not a "oh them kids" speech, it is just to explain why there wont be another of those mmorpg games.
But, there will probably be games that aspire to be, and their ability to handle the meeting with reality results in how close they come. This means there will be games with features you can tolerate because some of its other features are great. Perfection is in your mind and if you look at your favorite games, you will find stuff you dont like.
I keep an eye on mmorpgs just incase but real hope has been parked long ago. But there are other type of games like strategy games in open worlds or others, and maybe those are much more likely to present you with something you can enjoy. First step is to not jump on the beta train, resist the urge to preorder even if you think its just money you are loosing - Let the games proove themselves, let the facts build up and check with friends and boards before buying. This is what I am going to do with Diablo3 and GW2 for example because no one can really give valid info before having played atleast a month, and also especially new games change alot and some games are everchanging like WoW.
Also with that last thing in mind, it is quite possible to love a game for some years and then hate what it changed into - My examples of this are Everquest and WoW, and I am sure there are games that start out like crap and turn into something of you liking in time.
Last thing.. even a half bad game can become pretty good if you play it with friends (old and new).
add.. When games budgets are blown on stories, cutscenes, voiceover and flashy combat animations, it is only logical that generic long lasting content loose focus. Top that with the big coorperation way of thinking, there are no strong vision holders, they all become dynamic yes saying survivors. AND offcourse the fact that the boom in mmorpg business is mostly driven by asian companies and targeted to the asian consumers... lets face it, its a different taste of style.
"I am my connectome" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HA7GwKXfJB0
maybe, but it will take a small studio who is not afraid to burn some bridges when it comes to PR and customer service.
to pretty much say, "here is the game, our target audience, and anyone who does not like it can go play something else they do like."
But in this world, for some reason, people who have yet to spend money on a product still hold incredible power over a company.
You make a very good point here , was Vanguard to hard or is almost every other mmo on super easy. Vanguard to me is right on the money as far as challenge goes, it keeps my interest and nudges me to group. Another poster here said that Rift was super easy from lvl 1-50 and then the end game was hard-that is fine- but who wants to go through 50 levels to get to the good stuff?
Is a man not entitled to the herp of his derp?
Remember, I live in a world where juggalos and yugioh players are real things.
You can solo 1-55.
From level 51 on though you have to do Magi Hold - very few other places where you still can do something solo.
Why sell gold when idiots are lining up to buy coal at gold prices.
Unless the majority of the next big thing marketing hype fanbois drop dead next week, not a chance in hell.
Just plain hard? no....mmos need to appeal to the masses. you can have mmos that have hard things in them, but thats it
No they really dont need to appeal to the cancer. We did just fine without them before, things have only gone downhill for the genre as witnessed in the plethora of multi million dollar WoW clone duds.
People always say they want a hard MMO but they never stay. When EQ opened up classic servers it was the same thing...everyone said before the server opened how awesome it would be.
First thread on the forums "How come it takes 50 mobs to get to level 2? Do you expect us to have no life?"..and 1 week later the server is empty and everyone who said they wanted a hard MMO had their excuse ready, they have a job, kids, responsibilities. So do people who play Korean grinders or played EQ, they just don't have ADD.
Out of 10 people who say they want a hard MMO, 1 will stay and 9 will leave within the first week. That's why there's very few hard or slow MMO. Expectations changed, people expect, no they demand, to be max level within a few months instead of a year or more.
Chatting inside the game used to be the reason to play a game, the community, how fast you leveled didn't matter to most people, it wasn't a race, that's why it was so easy to tolerate a huge grind of a game, leveling wasn't important, it just happened.
Players used to gather just to chat with each other, it didn't matter if you wasted a whole day chatting in the city without xp, it took ages to level anyway, so you might as well get to know people right. A grind isn't really a grind anymore when you spend 90% of your time talking to other people.
What exactly is so hard about games like EQ and Vanguard? Not a single of the games on your list is hard to play.
EVE takes a lot of time to get into so I guess and there's tons of stuff to consider so that can be considered hard. But Vanguard? EQ? Really?
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
Its not that those games wrere hard, they just weren't Macdolalds style mmos, they were at least chilis..............does that analogy make any sense, it does to me right now, but I should have been asleep hours and hours ago.
Vanguard wasn't hard, but original EQ was hard as nails compared to current games, even Eve.
If you want an example, EQ's expansion Gates of Discord was unbeaten until after the next expansion 1 year later because no one could do it. Imagine if an expansion of WoW was so hard to progress that players gave up on the current expansion, waited a year, bought another expansion, just to beat the old one, I don't think that would go down very well.
WoW was actually developed by people who come from guilds that were killed by GoD (Gates of Discord). Fires of Heaven, Afterlife, all those WoW guilds, are guilds that gave up on EQ because of how hard GoD was.
you need a reality check. mmo developers are in it to make money...why on earth should they develop a game that will only appeal to a few?
and we did fine? like how? where?