Originally posted by Jean-Luc_Picard MMORPG in general could be a bit harder indeed, but lets be careful and do not confuse "hard" with "tedious", something many nostalgic people seem to do.
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what
it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience
because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in
the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you
playing an MMORPG?"
The over generalization on some posts in this thread is epic.
All Asian MMOa are the same?????? With just graphics changed?
ugh......
And people do speak with their wallets - always have, always will. Nobody is forced to play any game, so the gamers play what they like and pay for it.
What happened to MMOs - evolution just like with any other tech, and they will keep changing.
You can speak in generalizations when its true a larger percentage of the time, which the statement regarding Asian MMO is true in most cases. You can stick up for the exceptions if you like but the majority are cookie cutter cash shop clones. That point is not debatable.
Regarding your second point about MMO's evolving? Well they have evolved but to capture a large audience that did not make up the original group of people that played MMO's when they were founded. That group of people is asking the OP's question, not todays "gamer". Isn't that obvious to you? Clearly the evolution of MMO's was not in the founding players image but in the image of the mass's whose interests lie in most cases 180 degree off from early MMO players.
Face it we old school gamers found computer gaming when the barrier to entry was higher than it is today. Meaning you needed to possess in most cases an additional core set of interests outside of gaming. A fantasy or Si-fi junky mixed in with some technical expertise (building and operating early PC's) which makes for a more sophisticated gamers.
Most of todays MMO market are people that don't possess these traits (or skills) I wont go as far to call them mouth breathers but why not. Mouth breathers who want to pick up a gamepad controller and "game" between bong hits and sleeping. Through trying to get a HIgh School diploma might be in there too, and hoping for that job at Best Buy or IN N out.
The market today is aimed not at the sophisticated intellectual but at kids, people with A.D.D. and tire kickers. Us old school gamers can just sit back and weep at the complete commercialization of our genre and hobby.
Do you even realize how elitist, shallow and condescending your post comes across - and yet your point is that you represent a more sophisticated and intelligent "old school" demographic?
but it was generally true. How many people played computer games in the 70s? How many people were on the Internet before 1987? What skills were required to tweak things back then? Too many to make it massive. It is not elitism it just the way it was.
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what
it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience
because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in
the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you
playing an MMORPG?"
MMOs haven't gotten worse. They just haven't gotten better at the rate we're expecting. What they have done is gotten more diverse.
Jean makes a good point in that many people do confuse 'difficulty' with 'tedium', including designers. Heck, how many games have we had recently, where difficulty is directly related to 'how much health we give boss X'. This is so because of 2 reasons:
1) It's much MUCH harder to design a game where difficulty is determined by mechanics, instead of power scaling.
2) Gamers as a whole have shown that they are less willing to support a game with challenging mechanics, in favor of power scaling.
There was a study revealed a month or so ago, (I think it was by IGN) where they took newer gamers and had them playing older games. The majority of which couldn't clear world 1 of Mario. Lucky, this does seem like it might be changing. Which the rise in popularity of indie games, people are being exposed to more interesting mechanics. They're still not as popular as AAA games, but the exposure is still a good thing.
- The thing us MMO vets have to remember, is that the landscape of MMOs is EXTREMELY different now than it was during its conception. There are many many more games, more choices, more variety. Some may laugh at this (lol WoW clones!), but think about it. When MMOs first came out how many space games did we have? How many sports games? How many 2d sidescrolling MMOs did we have? How many MMOs involved lots of platforming? How many had active dodging & blocking? How many FPS MMOs did we have? Ones with tanks? Planes? It doesn't matter how jaded you've gotten, it's impossible to deny (unless you're somehow delusional) that the MMOs we have are different from the past.
The big change, is back then these games were new. The potential of these games was half the fun. We literally had NO idea what these games would be capable of. Now we do, and that's not as fun.
Go back and play some of those old games and compare. Seriously compare. Don't just play for the nostalgia trip and leave. Think about what was good and bad about those old games, and do the same for the new ones. Think about how MMOs have evolved from what they once were (for better or worse).
After all, I know back when I was playing EQ, DAoC, RO, etc. I wouldn't have imagined games like GW2, or Secret World, or PS2, etc.
I don't see that anything bad is happening with the industry. As I said in another post just moments ago, the only thing wrong is that we, as humans, are not accepting what is natural reaction to doing similar things for too long. The genre HAS been getting better. There is more to do, and those things are more fun than they were before. They don't FEEL it, however, because we've being doing similar things to them for years and years now. WoW combat versus old school combat is faster, more fluid and more interesting. Many new MMO's have even more interesting and fun elements than it does, so much so that it keeps stealing the best ideals as they come out (good ideal too).
But none of that matters. If you eat crappy steak every day for 5 years and someone hands you a filet you're still gonna kind of hate it because the difference between good beef and bad beef isn't as remarkable as the difference between any steak and any fish to your taste buds. The most amazing MMO ever made is still going to have core game elements that they all have (as is par for the course in being in the same genre). We've played those core concepts for 10 years or more. Maybe switch games for awhile and come back when its not so overplayed in your life.
Too many asian theme mmorpgs. i really dislike them.
Many mmorpg dont have open world where u can actually explore and find fun/interesting quests/places/mobs/rewards etc...
Players pretty much seen all already in difrend games, people rush new games and jump another game. there is now more mmorpg games then 20 years ago (or so).
There would be less mmorpg if WoW never been done. WoW major succees opened game company eyes to mmo market.
Most mmo games get released bugged/unfinished.
WE NEED MORE SANDBOX MMORPGS WITH HUGE WORLD. less dungeon raids too. more open world raids so game feel like mmo.
doing raid with 25-40 ppl dont give mmo feel, i can play many online game where is 64 player servers.
and same goes with pvp, 10v10, 15vs15? wut? u call that mmo pvp?! gief least 100v100 pvps. small pvp scales just show class imbalance.
And get rid fucking daily quests><
doing same daily quest every day and pay sub for...
WE NEED MORE SANDBOX MMORPGS WITH HUGE WORLD. less dungeon raids too. more open world raids so game feel like mmo.
And get rid fucking daily quests><
doing same daily quest every day and pay sub for...
A niche game made with niche mechanics that only the top 2% would even be able to enjoy? Unless you intend them to charge 100$ a month I don't see that model being very profitable. Which is another way of saying closed or F2P inside the first 3 months.
I think what happened to mmo's is we got what companies thought we wanted. We gravitated (early on) to easier/casual pve experiences. So they created more of those. I have always said, if you truly like what a game does then support it with your wallet. A company by nature will follow the money trail. I was subbed to three sandbox games that all closed shop years ago, and have yet to find a permanent home since. I do enjoy the themepark games, but once you have enjoyed the ride for awhile it grows stale. I really enjoy games that allow for players to build/destroy the world. Unfortunately the only games left that really allow that are just too buggy for me (Darkfall and Mortal online).
Cheers!
MMO Vet since AOL Neverwinter Nights circa 1992. My MMO beat up your MMO. =S
WE NEED MORE SANDBOX MMORPGS WITH HUGE WORLD. less dungeon raids too. more open world raids so game feel like mmo.
And get rid fucking daily quests><
doing same daily quest every day and pay sub for...
A niche game made with niche mechanics that only the top 2% would even be able to enjoy? Unless you intend them to charge 100$ a month I don't see that model being very profitable. Which is another way of saying closed or F2P inside the first 3 months.
MMO's are chasing the largest possible player numbers.
That means they have to become "easier", because they have to be accessible to an ever wider range of player skill levels and abilities.
In mainstream MMO's, "difficulty" has always been defined in terms of tedium and perseverance. There isn't really any other viable option at this point.
Any activity in the game that relies on physical skills (reflexes, eye-hand co-ordination, etc.) or mental skills (logic, pattern recognition, etc.) has to be easy enough for 75% of the players to complete "on-level". But that means the top 40-50% of the players are going to find it too easy.
The more players you have, the lower the bar has to be set on average.
So, to make something "difficult", or "rare", developers take a relatively easy activity and make the player fight the RNG. Repeat it 50 or 500 times. Everyone has the skill to do it, but not everyone has the motivation or perseverance.
Someone suggested using "difficulty sliders", which sounds like the ideal solution at first glance. However, tiered difficulty is usually coupled to tiered rewards and loot quality, and there the process begins to unravel. Players aspire to having the best, and will find a great variety of justifications as to why they are entitled to receiving it.
They will all praise the difficulty slider, but they'll all expect to be able to beat it on "hardmode"....
I think most MMO players will agree that todays MMO's are not very good anymore. But why is this? It's a strange phenomenon that we feel that way when the "best" MMO's out there are some of the most refined, functional, user-friendly, graphically beautiful, feature-rich and bug free games that have ever existed. What happened? What's missing? Is it truly the games' fault or is it we as gamers who have changed? To even begin to explore this question one first has to have a firm definition of what they consider an MMO, because in this day and age almost every genre has adopted one or more features from MMO's as their own.
I define MMO's as a game where hundreds or even thousands of players create their own avatars that coexist in a PERSISTENT game world. With their avatars the players complete quests and collect equipment to strengthen their avatars and explore the game world. The harder content can be tackled by groups of varying sizes in order to further strengthen the avatars of the players. Players can also engage in PvP with their avatars for additional competition.
It may very well be that we as the players have become bored of the MMO genre, bored of the grinding and the questing and the endless pursuit of gear. Bored of the hour-long raids and the boss fights and the guilds and the coordination and the showing our rewards off in cities. Bored of the mounts and the battlegrounds and the crafting and.....wait......I really don't think I'm bored of any of that. Are you?
I LOVE making a badass hero and adventuring across a fantastical world to become the mightiest hero in the land. I love organizing and coordinating raids. I love using my shiny rewards to tackle even more challenging bosses or pwning noobs in battlegrounds, duels or world pvp. I love collecting mounts, recipes, achievements and experiencing the epic storylines. I don't think any of that has changed. I still love these activities and long for the next big adventure.....So what's the problem? Why don't I like any of these current MMO offerings? After almost 4 years of asking myself this question as I tried every new major MMO to come out, I think I have found the answer. It's not a simple one, but if I had to put it all into one sentence I would say:
THESE GAMES ARE TOO EASY!!!
Now calling these games too easy may sound like I'm oversimplifying things but it's actually a very loaded statement. When I call these games too easy, I do literally mean they are not very challenging as a whole. Yes many games like WoW, SWTOR and others have "Hard Mode" content that's meant to give its conquerors the best rewards in the game, but what about the rest of the game? It's a grind fest, it's a faceroll, it's a race to the finish to get to "the good stuff". And even when you get there, your sense of achievement is still not there because it's the same bosses that the "noobs" fight but just toned up. And the rewards you get are the same equipment that pretty much anyone can get, just recolored or something and with slightly more stats.
What happened to the days when places in the world were actually DANGEROUS? Where no matter what level you were or gear you had you could and would often get your butt whooped? What happened to the days when you actually had to read the quest description to figure out where to go and how to do it? What happened to the days when you saw some dude with a badass weapon or armor and you asked him where he got it and he said it was crafted with a certain metal that only RARELY spawned in a super dangerous volcano that you would have to go risk dying 10 times over to get to?
Look, I don't consider myself some kind of sadist that enjoys dying all the time. I don't think monsters should be scaled to hit obnoxiously hard just for the sake of artificially making the game harder. I like depth, I like strategy. I'd like to use FFXI as an example. It is my humble opinion that that game SUCKED. You couldn't jump, you could not do ANYTHING without being in a group (with no good group making tools), and more importantly....even when at the highest level with good gear....you would fear aggro'ing and being killed by a BUNNY in certain zones....that's right, a bunny. FFXI was a perfect example of a game that overscaled mobs simply for the sake of making the game hard. It wasn't complex, it wasn't deep, it was just hard. The interface was clunky and there were many things about the game I would call dysfunctional. Yet even though that game "sucked", I experienced alot more excitement when I achieved anything in that game than I have in any other MMO for years now. You know why? Because it actually WAS an achievement. Not many people could max goldsmithing in that game or beat any number of endgame bosses (or even midgame bosses for that matter). It was so special to max goldsmithing that I actually knew the name of every maxxed goldsmither on my server....and I bet they felt special because of it.
I think that's what's been lost in so many modern MMO's, and I think I know why this has happened as well. Quite simply, it's money. When World of Warcraft showed the world how much money can be made with MMO's by appealing to a casual audience they killed the MMO genre for over half a decade (so far). I think Blizzard struck an almost perfect balance of accessibility, polish and difficulty in Vanilla WoW. I only managed to raid about half of the content in Vanilla before TBC came out, but even then I knew that I was enjoying myself because I always had something to aspire to. They managed to accumulate an unheard of number of subscribers by the time its first expansion rolled around and actually managed to maintain alot of the same rewarding feelings well into The Burning Crusade. From then on however it all went downhill; they took casualness too far, their subscriber numbers soared and the sense of reward was lost. Many MMO's have since emulated this model in bids to achieve similar large subscriber numbers. They used huge budgets to produce pretty, polished, accessible and functional MMO's that unfortunately were also too easy.
I can't blame them for trying to get large subscriber numbers though; after all gaming is a business. But if all games follow this model, what's left? A market with a bunch of games where the players don't feel challenged and rewarded for their efforts and don't feel committed to their characters. A market where players don't want to pay a subsciption fee because they can't see themselves playing the same game for years to come. I know there are some "hardcore" MMO's out there like Darkfall but those suffer from another problem; they lack the polish, functionality and beauty that we've come to expect from quality MMO's. Now I can deal with less than stellar graphics, but polish is not something I can do without. Maybe I'm spoiled, but so what? I don't complain about purchasing a game I like or even paying a subscription fee. I know my money is well worth a decent looking, challenging game that is well polished. I've experienced some of the best and the worst that MMO's can offer and I know it can be done if developers stop focusing on making game for millions of subscribers and instead make a game that the players can live in.
What do YOU think?
*MMO's that I have played for 2 months or more: Everquest, Everquest II, FFXI, World of Warcraft, Age of Conan, Guild Wars, Dark Fall, Lord of the Rings Online, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, Rift, Warhammer Online, Aion, SWTOR, Guild Wars 2*
I'm guessing you wanted to inspire thought on this. However, it seems as if you have answered your own question.
Here's my answer: profits at the cost of creativity, with an assumption that it is easier to make profit off of a game with a few bells and whistles only, and allow the market to shift to a new title, than it is to invest heavily in something truly exceptional, and risk a niche product.
Finally, I guarantee that anyone with the finances to make a new mmorpg, will care as to what you or I have said, along with nearly this entire site.
In mainstream MMO's, "difficulty" has always been defined in terms of tedium and perseverance. There isn't really any other viable option at this point.
Of course there is. Difficulty in combat mechanics. See WOW with LFR, normal and hardcore raid .. 3 difficulties. Nothing to do with tedium. Either you beat the boss, or not, and you can try again right away.
Their only mistake is not to take the same difficulty setting and apply to leveling up dungeons.
Most people here might agree that MMOs ain't so fun anymore but this site is mainly used by MMO fanatics and people who played MMOs for many years.
And yes, difficulty is spot on even if the same could be said about any none PvP genre of games.
But many old MMO players also confuse grindy with difficult. Spawn camping really takes patience, not skill.
I think also another reason is that MMOs mostly are easier versions of older games today, few games try out new things so for us vets most MMOs are easer versions of EQ or M59 with better graphics and faster leveling. It would be a lot easier to forgive a games difficulty if it really felt new instead of just repetitions of games we already played for over 15 years.
In mainstream MMO's, "difficulty" has always been defined in terms of tedium and perseverance. There isn't really any other viable option at this point.
Of course there is. Difficulty in combat mechanics. See WOW with LFR, normal and hardcore raid .. 3 difficulties. Nothing to do with tedium. Either you beat the boss, or not, and you can try again right away.
Their only mistake is not to take the same difficulty setting and apply to leveling up dungeons.
Read the whole post next time ?
There is no alternative to tedium to make content "hard", because if it was a skill check, only a tiny minority of the playerbase would be able to beat it.
That's one of the major reasons why raids are only completed by a small minority of the total players in any MMO.
In mainstream MMO's, "difficulty" has always been defined in terms of tedium and perseverance. There isn't really any other viable option at this point.
Of course there is. Difficulty in combat mechanics. See WOW with LFR, normal and hardcore raid .. 3 difficulties. Nothing to do with tedium. Either you beat the boss, or not, and you can try again right away.
Their only mistake is not to take the same difficulty setting and apply to leveling up dungeons.
Read the whole post next time ?
There is no alternative to tedium to make content "hard", because if it was a skill check, only a tiny minority of the playerbase would be able to beat it.
That's one of the major reasons why raids are only completed by a small minority of the total players in any MMO.
So? Have 3 levels (or however many) of difficulties so most players can see the content, but only a tiny minority will beat the "hard" mode. It works for wow, and many other games.
Skill check works. And raids are not completed by a small minority. May be hard mode raid. But in WOW, LFR is completed by everyone.
I'm glad my thoughts have caused so much debate to take place on these forums. I too have thought a lot about some of these topics over the years, here's how I feel about this one:
Normal/Hardmode/Sliding Scale Dungeons and Raids:
When WoW first introduced them I thought I would love it. After all despite being a devoted and rather accomplished raider I never managed to experience ALL of the content of the MMO's i played. I thought it would be a great idea to be able to see all the content the developers created and still be limited in my character progression by me and my guild's skill level. I thought it would still feel rewarding since characters that acquired all of the best gear would still be a rare sight. But when I actually got into the meat of it, I discovered another problem: Everyone was working on the same content.
In order to ensure that players got to see all of the content in the expansion, Blizzard created dungeons that provided gear to advance new max level characters to the strength level of the newest tier raid. This ensured that no one was forced to grind for months in any of the previous tier raids in order to experience the new ones and fall behind the release schedule. The intent was for everyone to be able to experience everything while still having the option to be elite (hard modes) but it resulted in an entire community working on the same content at the same time. Epic gear was everywhere, many characters looked the same.
The truly elite players were still few but they did not stand out nearly as much as before and the sense of accomplishment was lost. I actually did manage to get into a top 50 guild during WOTLK and beat all the hardmode content in the expansion and you know how I was left feeling about it? Empty....
I knew i was among the best but I didn't feel accomplished and more importantly I didn't even feel a sense of wonder playing the game. There wasn't any location or dungeon or raid in the world where I felt weak and would thus would need to get even stronger through more levelling or raiding (in an expansion). I didn't feel like I was living in an actual game world. In a real world people are having their own struggles, their own adventures, their own things to aspire to; big, small and everything in between. But in WOTLK, everyone was working on the same thing at the same time and it felt meaningless. The whole game world was unimportant except for the current tier of raids and everyone knew what all the rooms looked like, what the bosses looked like, what many of their moves were like regardless of if they were hardmode or not.
Despite how much I looked forward to this feature it ended up making me feel very butthurt for years to follow. Oddly enough though I didn't and don't feel particularly butthurt about the Raids, Dungeons and Zones I DIDN'T get to see in previous expansions or in other games......Do you? Some food for thought.
just curious, did you finish the HC content of WoW? or is that too easy for ya too?
and seriously, 2 month or more?
i'd start at 6 month or more, testing em does not count
Yes I beat all the HC content of WOTLK and Cataclysm and then quit. I listed all the games I played for at least 2 months but that does not mean I did not play them for much more than that. Most of the games on that list I played for at least a year. Some of them were just not polished enough to be able to tolerate for very long. I played AoC for 3 months with a hardcore raiding guild called Addiction. I hit max level in a little over 2 weeks and then proceeded to get world firsts in a number of tier 1 and tier 2 raids despite the staggering number of bugs and lack of completed content. But the game was just bad at the time and I couldn't see myself committing to a game that was so unpolished. I had a similar experience in Warhammer Online minus the raiding. That game was thankfully more playable but suffered from just being way too boring at max level. I agree many MMO's take a good 6 months to get a good feel for but some of the MMO's that I've played revealed all they had to offer me quite quickly and as such I felt compelled to include them in the list of my experiences.
It's true I have played many MMO's over the years and have experienced being a noob, an average player and an elite raider. But it's not what I have or haven't achieved in these games that gives anything I say any credence. In fact I don't expect anything I say to be taken seriously for any reason other than that some of you have gone through similar experiences and feel the same way.
I know that today the number of people who like MMO's is much larger than it used to be and that old school players are now in the minority. I don't expect the majority of players to share the same sentiments as me, since for many years now MMO's have catered to a much more general type of gamer. Ones who don't appreciate MMO's for the kind of niche genre they used to be.
Please don't lump me in however with those old school MMO players that want tedious grinds or no-lifing a game to feel accomplished. I greatly appreciate the things recent mmo's have improved on, such as polish, function, accessibility, new mechanics and graphics. I just feel like MMO's have lost their soul, and I think this lowered difficulty curve has alot to do with it.
Comments
How about arduous?
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
but it was generally true. How many people played computer games in the 70s? How many people were on the Internet before 1987? What skills were required to tweak things back then? Too many to make it massive. It is not elitism it just the way it was.
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
MMOs haven't gotten worse. They just haven't gotten better at the rate we're expecting. What they have done is gotten more diverse.
Jean makes a good point in that many people do confuse 'difficulty' with 'tedium', including designers. Heck, how many games have we had recently, where difficulty is directly related to 'how much health we give boss X'. This is so because of 2 reasons:
1) It's much MUCH harder to design a game where difficulty is determined by mechanics, instead of power scaling.
2) Gamers as a whole have shown that they are less willing to support a game with challenging mechanics, in favor of power scaling.
There was a study revealed a month or so ago, (I think it was by IGN) where they took newer gamers and had them playing older games. The majority of which couldn't clear world 1 of Mario. Lucky, this does seem like it might be changing. Which the rise in popularity of indie games, people are being exposed to more interesting mechanics. They're still not as popular as AAA games, but the exposure is still a good thing.
- The thing us MMO vets have to remember, is that the landscape of MMOs is EXTREMELY different now than it was during its conception. There are many many more games, more choices, more variety. Some may laugh at this (lol WoW clones!), but think about it. When MMOs first came out how many space games did we have? How many sports games? How many 2d sidescrolling MMOs did we have? How many MMOs involved lots of platforming? How many had active dodging & blocking? How many FPS MMOs did we have? Ones with tanks? Planes? It doesn't matter how jaded you've gotten, it's impossible to deny (unless you're somehow delusional) that the MMOs we have are different from the past.
The big change, is back then these games were new. The potential of these games was half the fun. We literally had NO idea what these games would be capable of. Now we do, and that's not as fun.
Go back and play some of those old games and compare. Seriously compare. Don't just play for the nostalgia trip and leave. Think about what was good and bad about those old games, and do the same for the new ones. Think about how MMOs have evolved from what they once were (for better or worse).
After all, I know back when I was playing EQ, DAoC, RO, etc. I wouldn't have imagined games like GW2, or Secret World, or PS2, etc.
I don't see that anything bad is happening with the industry. As I said in another post just moments ago, the only thing wrong is that we, as humans, are not accepting what is natural reaction to doing similar things for too long. The genre HAS been getting better. There is more to do, and those things are more fun than they were before. They don't FEEL it, however, because we've being doing similar things to them for years and years now. WoW combat versus old school combat is faster, more fluid and more interesting. Many new MMO's have even more interesting and fun elements than it does, so much so that it keeps stealing the best ideals as they come out (good ideal too).
But none of that matters. If you eat crappy steak every day for 5 years and someone hands you a filet you're still gonna kind of hate it because the difference between good beef and bad beef isn't as remarkable as the difference between any steak and any fish to your taste buds. The most amazing MMO ever made is still going to have core game elements that they all have (as is par for the course in being in the same genre). We've played those core concepts for 10 years or more. Maybe switch games for awhile and come back when its not so overplayed in your life.
Too many asian theme mmorpgs. i really dislike them.
Many mmorpg dont have open world where u can actually explore and find fun/interesting quests/places/mobs/rewards etc...
Players pretty much seen all already in difrend games, people rush new games and jump another game. there is now more mmorpg games then 20 years ago (or so).
There would be less mmorpg if WoW never been done. WoW major succees opened game company eyes to mmo market.
Most mmo games get released bugged/unfinished.
WE NEED MORE SANDBOX MMORPGS WITH HUGE WORLD. less dungeon raids too. more open world raids so game feel like mmo.
doing raid with 25-40 ppl dont give mmo feel, i can play many online game where is 64 player servers.
and same goes with pvp, 10v10, 15vs15? wut? u call that mmo pvp?! gief least 100v100 pvps. small pvp scales just show class imbalance.
And get rid fucking daily quests><
doing same daily quest every day and pay sub for...
A niche game made with niche mechanics that only the top 2% would even be able to enjoy? Unless you intend them to charge 100$ a month I don't see that model being very profitable. Which is another way of saying closed or F2P inside the first 3 months.
I think what happened to mmo's is we got what companies thought we wanted. We gravitated (early on) to easier/casual pve experiences. So they created more of those. I have always said, if you truly like what a game does then support it with your wallet. A company by nature will follow the money trail. I was subbed to three sandbox games that all closed shop years ago, and have yet to find a permanent home since. I do enjoy the themepark games, but once you have enjoyed the ride for awhile it grows stale. I really enjoy games that allow for players to build/destroy the world. Unfortunately the only games left that really allow that are just too buggy for me (Darkfall and Mortal online).
Cheers!
MMO Vet since AOL Neverwinter Nights circa 1992. My MMO beat up your MMO. =S
u say 2% only enjoy sandbox open world?
MMO's are chasing the largest possible player numbers.
That means they have to become "easier", because they have to be accessible to an ever wider range of player skill levels and abilities.
In mainstream MMO's, "difficulty" has always been defined in terms of tedium and perseverance. There isn't really any other viable option at this point.
Any activity in the game that relies on physical skills (reflexes, eye-hand co-ordination, etc.) or mental skills (logic, pattern recognition, etc.) has to be easy enough for 75% of the players to complete "on-level". But that means the top 40-50% of the players are going to find it too easy.
The more players you have, the lower the bar has to be set on average.
So, to make something "difficult", or "rare", developers take a relatively easy activity and make the player fight the RNG. Repeat it 50 or 500 times. Everyone has the skill to do it, but not everyone has the motivation or perseverance.
Someone suggested using "difficulty sliders", which sounds like the ideal solution at first glance. However, tiered difficulty is usually coupled to tiered rewards and loot quality, and there the process begins to unravel. Players aspire to having the best, and will find a great variety of justifications as to why they are entitled to receiving it.
They will all praise the difficulty slider, but they'll all expect to be able to beat it on "hardmode"....
I'm guessing you wanted to inspire thought on this. However, it seems as if you have answered your own question.
Here's my answer: profits at the cost of creativity, with an assumption that it is easier to make profit off of a game with a few bells and whistles only, and allow the market to shift to a new title, than it is to invest heavily in something truly exceptional, and risk a niche product.
Finally, I guarantee that anyone with the finances to make a new mmorpg, will care as to what you or I have said, along with nearly this entire site.
How mmorpg combat can be hard if u got limited abilitys and gear plays big part combat effect?
and ofc there is some elitist jerks that say every game is too easy what they play.
want dificult? go play Tekken or others combat games hardest dificult where u need press huge button chains do effective damage.
Of course there is. Difficulty in combat mechanics. See WOW with LFR, normal and hardcore raid .. 3 difficulties. Nothing to do with tedium. Either you beat the boss, or not, and you can try again right away.
Their only mistake is not to take the same difficulty setting and apply to leveling up dungeons.
Most people here might agree that MMOs ain't so fun anymore but this site is mainly used by MMO fanatics and people who played MMOs for many years.
And yes, difficulty is spot on even if the same could be said about any none PvP genre of games.
But many old MMO players also confuse grindy with difficult. Spawn camping really takes patience, not skill.
I think also another reason is that MMOs mostly are easier versions of older games today, few games try out new things so for us vets most MMOs are easer versions of EQ or M59 with better graphics and faster leveling. It would be a lot easier to forgive a games difficulty if it really felt new instead of just repetitions of games we already played for over 15 years.
Read the whole post next time ?
There is no alternative to tedium to make content "hard", because if it was a skill check, only a tiny minority of the playerbase would be able to beat it.
That's one of the major reasons why raids are only completed by a small minority of the total players in any MMO.
So? Have 3 levels (or however many) of difficulties so most players can see the content, but only a tiny minority will beat the "hard" mode. It works for wow, and many other games.
Skill check works. And raids are not completed by a small minority. May be hard mode raid. But in WOW, LFR is completed by everyone.
I'm glad my thoughts have caused so much debate to take place on these forums. I too have thought a lot about some of these topics over the years, here's how I feel about this one:
Normal/Hardmode/Sliding Scale Dungeons and Raids:
When WoW first introduced them I thought I would love it. After all despite being a devoted and rather accomplished raider I never managed to experience ALL of the content of the MMO's i played. I thought it would be a great idea to be able to see all the content the developers created and still be limited in my character progression by me and my guild's skill level. I thought it would still feel rewarding since characters that acquired all of the best gear would still be a rare sight. But when I actually got into the meat of it, I discovered another problem: Everyone was working on the same content.
In order to ensure that players got to see all of the content in the expansion, Blizzard created dungeons that provided gear to advance new max level characters to the strength level of the newest tier raid. This ensured that no one was forced to grind for months in any of the previous tier raids in order to experience the new ones and fall behind the release schedule. The intent was for everyone to be able to experience everything while still having the option to be elite (hard modes) but it resulted in an entire community working on the same content at the same time. Epic gear was everywhere, many characters looked the same.
The truly elite players were still few but they did not stand out nearly as much as before and the sense of accomplishment was lost. I actually did manage to get into a top 50 guild during WOTLK and beat all the hardmode content in the expansion and you know how I was left feeling about it? Empty....
I knew i was among the best but I didn't feel accomplished and more importantly I didn't even feel a sense of wonder playing the game. There wasn't any location or dungeon or raid in the world where I felt weak and would thus would need to get even stronger through more levelling or raiding (in an expansion). I didn't feel like I was living in an actual game world. In a real world people are having their own struggles, their own adventures, their own things to aspire to; big, small and everything in between. But in WOTLK, everyone was working on the same thing at the same time and it felt meaningless. The whole game world was unimportant except for the current tier of raids and everyone knew what all the rooms looked like, what the bosses looked like, what many of their moves were like regardless of if they were hardmode or not.
Despite how much I looked forward to this feature it ended up making me feel very butthurt for years to follow. Oddly enough though I didn't and don't feel particularly butthurt about the Raids, Dungeons and Zones I DIDN'T get to see in previous expansions or in other games......Do you? Some food for thought.
just curious, did you finish the HC content of WoW? or is that too easy for ya too?
and seriously, 2 month or more?
i'd start at 6 month or more, testing em does not count
"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"
Yes I beat all the HC content of WOTLK and Cataclysm and then quit. I listed all the games I played for at least 2 months but that does not mean I did not play them for much more than that. Most of the games on that list I played for at least a year. Some of them were just not polished enough to be able to tolerate for very long. I played AoC for 3 months with a hardcore raiding guild called Addiction. I hit max level in a little over 2 weeks and then proceeded to get world firsts in a number of tier 1 and tier 2 raids despite the staggering number of bugs and lack of completed content. But the game was just bad at the time and I couldn't see myself committing to a game that was so unpolished. I had a similar experience in Warhammer Online minus the raiding. That game was thankfully more playable but suffered from just being way too boring at max level. I agree many MMO's take a good 6 months to get a good feel for but some of the MMO's that I've played revealed all they had to offer me quite quickly and as such I felt compelled to include them in the list of my experiences.
It's true I have played many MMO's over the years and have experienced being a noob, an average player and an elite raider. But it's not what I have or haven't achieved in these games that gives anything I say any credence. In fact I don't expect anything I say to be taken seriously for any reason other than that some of you have gone through similar experiences and feel the same way.
I know that today the number of people who like MMO's is much larger than it used to be and that old school players are now in the minority. I don't expect the majority of players to share the same sentiments as me, since for many years now MMO's have catered to a much more general type of gamer. Ones who don't appreciate MMO's for the kind of niche genre they used to be.
Please don't lump me in however with those old school MMO players that want tedious grinds or no-lifing a game to feel accomplished. I greatly appreciate the things recent mmo's have improved on, such as polish, function, accessibility, new mechanics and graphics. I just feel like MMO's have lost their soul, and I think this lowered difficulty curve has alot to do with it.