So everything is being designed for casual players to just hop on and enjoy, very little challenge in dungeons, super simplified combat systems. What is being made for the hardcore player who wants a next gen game that promote difficult combat, and exploration, and figuring out quests and mechanics?
I find it hard to believe there are no hardcore players left that it is ok to just completely disregard that side of the playerbase.
Causal games can have complex combat, challenging dungeons, exploration and quests with puzzles and such too but not many players have 2 hours just to finish one dungeon so expect more 15-30 minutes raids rather. Non-repeatable quests with complicated puzzles are just 1-off, non-reusable codes so likely most games in the future will produce less of them.
If your definition of a "hardcore" game is a 2 year long 24/7 grind then probably I think there won't be anything left for you in 2 to 3 years. Developers with multiple products may offer cross-product achievement systems that allow progress in Game A earns you achievement in Game B though.
There are many more things to address of what a successful MMO needs, but these 3 basics are what is causing just about all recent MMOs to fail. They are not making content that is fun to play, whether they call it hardcore or casual, it is as simple as that.
I doubt all recent MMOs are failing.
I just finished Marvel Heroes with my first hero. It was a lot of ARPG fun. Took less than 30 hours. I haven't seen any numbers but given the population i am seeing, and that they are adding content, i don't think the game fails.
did you even read his post? he said hard core paragon 100 not merely inferno diablo kill. though he was still flawed as the paragon system wasnt even released until months after game was released but /shrug.
Blizzard Titan - already stated it will have a casual focus
Elder scrolls online - casual focus
So everything is being designed for casual players to just hop on and enjoy, very little challenge in dungeons, super simplified combat systems. What is being made for the hardcore player who wants a next gen game that promote difficult combat, and exploration, and figuring out quests and mechanics?
I find it hard to believe there are no hardcore players left that it is ok to just completely disregard that side of the playerbase.
It is all about market share. hardcore is a small percentage so...
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?"
Were MMO's ever truely difficult though? Sure a lot of them had some difficult bosses, but the hardest part of that was organizing a group to go and physically get the boss down. There was a lot of grinding back in the day, or waiting for camps and I mean that isn't really difficult, it's more of taking a lot of your time to left click and press a couple numbers over and over and over for 30 hours straight because you didn't want to lose the camp you waited 2 days for.
There are a few MMO's around for hardcore players, and they tend to be disliked by the majority. DF UW is pretty hardcore to me. But it seems like the definition of hardcore player is very fleeting. Most "hardcore" players want something different. There are open pvp games which to me are very fun, and I would say in my opinion require a hardcore type of mindset to play them. But then alot of the people who think they are a hardcore mmo player HATE open world pvp saying that it ruins their game. Then other hardcore players think that making a game with quest hubs is making it too casual. So they make games that don't have quest hubs, and require a bit of a grind then you have the few people who wanted that type of game playing it and the other hardcore type of players are left complaining that they can't do what THEY wanted to do.
It's very hard for a developer to make a game that caters to hardcore players simply because there are too many different types of hardcore players. A lot of people have time, but a lot of people want different things. I want a truely open world pvp game with full loot and quests that are worth it. With destructible buildings and pvp that everyone is viable for. The closest thing is darkfall and I do play that. I also still play Lineage 2. Both aren't really casual type of games, although Lineage did take out the grind pre 85, but left the 85 - 99 grind.
I did hard mode raid back in WOTLK, and we wiped, wiped, wiped for 3 hours before getting anywhere.
Which is really kind of dumb when you think about it, all that development money spent on content that only 2% of the player base will ever see? Someone has their priorities out of whack.
It all depends on how you define "hardcore" and "casual".
Let me try another approach. In a game, like EQ1 it was more about the journey to the max level that was fun. WoW and followers had it vice versa. It was more about rush to max level and then have fun.
I know this view simplifies alot of stuff in between. However the solution to cater to both crowds might be : Make the journey fun !
If you shorten the journey, or the fun in it, you can as well skip it all and make an option to start at max level, or simply leave any char advancement out.
Release a game, that is as much fun at Lv 1, as at Lv 60 or 100 or whatever, aka having as much content for Lv 1 as for Lv 60. Have the game be challenging and difficult from Lv 1 and slow to advance. Make the folks EARN each and every single advancement..
Allow no changing of names and let people build a real reputation (good or bad). Make a carebear server und pvp-full-loot-everything-goes server
Mix all this well into a haflway decent graphic engine and you have a longtime-winner.
EvE Online gives you the direction, how a game should be developed and advanced. I am not a huge fan of EvE itself, although i played it 3 years. But to my knowledge it is the only game, that still has a slow but steady growing customer base.
And they still can afford to bring each and every expansion fpr $0.00.
did you even read his post? he said hard core paragon 100 not merely inferno diablo kill. though he was still flawed as the paragon system wasnt even released until months after game was released but /shrug.
patch 1.0.5 Oct 16, 2012 released MP and was beatened 18 nov 2012 one month later porves my point again heres the video
I think the only way to incorporate a challenge consistently is in horizontal progression. It becomes a natural requirement to make the quest mechanics fun. So puzzle quests, tough A.I., tough raids as well, that might have an easy mode to help people work groups then try nightmare mode.
Since a teen rated mmo especially, will attract people who want that gratification feeling they get from other games. The best way to do that is to treat every piece of content as a stand alone, that is also not requirement, and could be a quest chain with rewards sprinkled along the way. And a quest chain in reality as its own unique quest mechanics would be a single player title.
Trying to put challenging content in between in a themepark with segregated end game, only slows down the player to their destination. So it makes it more frustrating not to enjoy the individual content or challenge.
Write bad things that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on a piece of marble
The original campaign in GW1 was quite a challenge to beat at first. You had to be very organized and have good builds to get through some of the missions, and still you would sometimes have to try 3-5 times before you got it. Very satisfying though. Then they toned down the difficulty significantly and offered a hard mode option later.
But you're right, usually in MMOs you can just out-level the content or bring more friends. Or the encounters are insanely stupid like the mobs have some instakill ability, have retarted amount of HP or you have to exploit the AI in some ways.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
Hardcore players do not exist anymore, the ones that believe they are can't see the forest through the trees. Just because a game has "casual focus" doesnt mean it can't be played in a hardcore fashion. The modern hardcore gamer is really actually far from hardcore, this is because they demand to be hand fed a "hardcore" game. there is plenty of room for hardcores, the hardcores just need to let go of the tunnel vision and see the light.
I noticed this game recently went free to play on Steam, for some reason when it came out years ago it just really didn't appeal to me and I was in the middle of playing World of Warcraft. I started playing Conan a few days ago and it is proving to be very entertaining, great graphics, exciting voice acted story, extremely deep combat system (Second only to Tera) and in general just a very fun game!
The biggest difference that I see is that hardcore players need to play at every opportunity and casual players don't need to play at all. Also, hardcore players look to master every aspect of the game they are playing while casual players are content with just having fun.
At one point in my life I considered myself a hardcore gamer. I played at everyone moment that I could even if that ended up being 10-15 minutes. But, as I got older other things became a priority; first it was my wife and my job, and recently my son has taken up my time. So, now I am lucky if I get an hour a day. But, there are some games that I still consider myself hardcore b/c I want to be perfect at every aspect. The last game that did that to me was Civilization 4. That was before my son was born and it took my computer to stop working for me to step back and realize what that game had done to me.
Wildstar will be harcore, they bring back 40 men raids. To me this is as hardcore as you can get...
ESO - ugh, world look good but the rest looks horrible
EQN - My mind already tells me this mmo will be a niche free to play action rpg with twitch combat.
Titan - i think i will have more gray hair then gandalf when it gets released.
So i think out of yout list Wildstar will be the only hardcore mmo. Maybe FF ARR, i havent seen hardcore contend, but i know their lead developer Naoki Yoshida have some hardcore stuff for us waiting. he is a extremely competitive player himself, was ranked #1 in DaoC.
So we might have 2 solid hardcore mmo's comming out soon
I just wish we had some more info from CCP about WOD...... If eve online is any indication then brace yourself....CCP does their own thing, they dont care for aiming to please causals, their stance is - dont like it ? gtfo and play Hello Kitty Island.
Time my friend......we need to wait for the realy good stuf a little more.
Sure there is. You just need a game with a difficulty slider like Diablo 3.
Sorry, I was talking (check the topic!) about MMOs and not pve instance grinders with 6 people max. Feel free to name any MMOs with such a slider. And no, I am not talking about hardmode instances being somehow comparable, I am looking for a MMO that's a challenge in its whole and not just in some kind of instance.
Sure there is. You just need a game with a difficulty slider like Diablo 3.
Sorry, I was talking (check the topic!) about MMOs and not pve instance grinders with 6 people max. Feel free to name any MMOs with such a slider. And no, I am not talking about hardmode instances being somehow comparable, I am looking for a MMO that's a challenge in its whole and not just in some kind of instance.
You didn't get the memo ... most MMO gameplay is in instances anyway. That is why D3 is pretty much close enough to a MMO for me.
MMOs should learn from D3. Difficulty sliders work perfectly in instances.
And it is not like there is no difficulty setting in MMOs. LFR/normal/hard mode raid. Dungeon difficulty in DDO. They should just do more.
Blizzard Titan - already stated it will have a casual focus
Elder scrolls online - casual focus
So everything is being designed for casual players to just hop on and enjoy, very little challenge in dungeons, super simplified combat systems. What is being made for the hardcore player who wants a next gen game that promote difficult combat, and exploration, and figuring out quests and mechanics?
I find it hard to believe there are no hardcore players left that it is ok to just completely disregard that side of the playerbase.
It is all about market share. hardcore is a small percentage so...
its sad that dumb people with sawdust for brains and hamers as hands hold the biggest percentage
They are too few in numbers, and require too much attention to truely matter in the long run.
Plus, they burn through content like there is no tomorrow.
This is more true than many would want to admit.
-Too few in numbers: obvious.
-Require too much attention: who screams the loudest on forums at the devs? Hardcore players who spend day and night arguing a 1-2% DPS increase/decrease or writing encyclopedias when they lose in PvP due to perceived "imbalance"
-Burn through content - hardcore are always first to the end, first to beat encounters, first to complain (and then drop sub and come to MMORPG.com and bitch the game has no content, even though they just spent 300+ hours in the game in a month)
And ya'll wonder why no one makes games for you?
Devs can only work so long and so hard for ingrates who don't show a lick of support or appreciation.
Eventually they realized "Hey!? We can make this game for the people who play 4-12 hours a week, make more money, not get yelled at and called morons all the time, and not have to work 24 hours a day?!?"
Then why cant they make a mmorpg that is both hardcore and casual focus?
They probably can. They choose not to. They don't owe the hardcore players a game. It is a free market. If they determine they want to go after a more casual audience for whatever reason they like (more money, better ROI, less risk, easy ....), it is their prerogative.
Comments
Causal games can have complex combat, challenging dungeons, exploration and quests with puzzles and such too but not many players have 2 hours just to finish one dungeon so expect more 15-30 minutes raids rather. Non-repeatable quests with complicated puzzles are just 1-off, non-reusable codes so likely most games in the future will produce less of them.
If your definition of a "hardcore" game is a 2 year long 24/7 grind then probably I think there won't be anything left for you in 2 to 3 years. Developers with multiple products may offer cross-product achievement systems that allow progress in Game A earns you achievement in Game B though.
I doubt all recent MMOs are failing.
I just finished Marvel Heroes with my first hero. It was a lot of ARPG fun. Took less than 30 hours. I haven't seen any numbers but given the population i am seeing, and that they are adding content, i don't think the game fails.
Diablo 3 relaesed May 15 2012
Inferno diablo kill confirmed May 26th 2012
http://www.staged.com/video?v=VjZb
heres the video... next lie!
did you even read his post? he said hard core paragon 100 not merely inferno diablo kill. though he was still flawed as the paragon system wasnt even released until months after game was released but /shrug.
Be the Ultimate Ninja! Play Billy Vs. SNAKEMAN today!
It is all about market share. hardcore is a small percentage so...
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?"
Were MMO's ever truely difficult though? Sure a lot of them had some difficult bosses, but the hardest part of that was organizing a group to go and physically get the boss down. There was a lot of grinding back in the day, or waiting for camps and I mean that isn't really difficult, it's more of taking a lot of your time to left click and press a couple numbers over and over and over for 30 hours straight because you didn't want to lose the camp you waited 2 days for.
There are a few MMO's around for hardcore players, and they tend to be disliked by the majority. DF UW is pretty hardcore to me. But it seems like the definition of hardcore player is very fleeting. Most "hardcore" players want something different. There are open pvp games which to me are very fun, and I would say in my opinion require a hardcore type of mindset to play them. But then alot of the people who think they are a hardcore mmo player HATE open world pvp saying that it ruins their game. Then other hardcore players think that making a game with quest hubs is making it too casual. So they make games that don't have quest hubs, and require a bit of a grind then you have the few people who wanted that type of game playing it and the other hardcore type of players are left complaining that they can't do what THEY wanted to do.
It's very hard for a developer to make a game that caters to hardcore players simply because there are too many different types of hardcore players. A lot of people have time, but a lot of people want different things. I want a truely open world pvp game with full loot and quests that are worth it. With destructible buildings and pvp that everyone is viable for. The closest thing is darkfall and I do play that. I also still play Lineage 2. Both aren't really casual type of games, although Lineage did take out the grind pre 85, but left the 85 - 99 grind.
Yes, Sunwell was seen by only 2% of the players.
I did hard mode raid back in WOTLK, and we wiped, wiped, wiped for 3 hours before getting anywhere.
Which is really kind of dumb when you think about it, all that development money spent on content that only 2% of the player base will ever see? Someone has their priorities out of whack.
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
Hope: None
It all depends on how you define "hardcore" and "casual".
Let me try another approach. In a game, like EQ1 it was more about the journey to the max level that was fun. WoW and followers had it vice versa. It was more about rush to max level and then have fun.
I know this view simplifies alot of stuff in between. However the solution to cater to both crowds might be : Make the journey fun !
If you shorten the journey, or the fun in it, you can as well skip it all and make an option to start at max level, or simply leave any char advancement out.
Release a game, that is as much fun at Lv 1, as at Lv 60 or 100 or whatever, aka having as much content for Lv 1 as for Lv 60. Have the game be challenging and difficult from Lv 1 and slow to advance. Make the folks EARN each and every single advancement..
Allow no changing of names and let people build a real reputation (good or bad). Make a carebear server und pvp-full-loot-everything-goes server
Mix all this well into a haflway decent graphic engine and you have a longtime-winner.
EvE Online gives you the direction, how a game should be developed and advanced. I am not a huge fan of EvE itself, although i played it 3 years. But to my knowledge it is the only game, that still has a slow but steady growing customer base.
And they still can afford to bring each and every expansion fpr $0.00.
My 2cp.
patch 1.0.5 Oct 16, 2012 released MP and was beatened 18 nov 2012 one month later porves my point again heres the video
http://www.diablofans.com/topic/78429-world-first-last-diablo-mp10-inferno-naked-kill-live-video/
I think the only way to incorporate a challenge consistently is in horizontal progression. It becomes a natural requirement to make the quest mechanics fun. So puzzle quests, tough A.I., tough raids as well, that might have an easy mode to help people work groups then try nightmare mode.
Since a teen rated mmo especially, will attract people who want that gratification feeling they get from other games. The best way to do that is to treat every piece of content as a stand alone, that is also not requirement, and could be a quest chain with rewards sprinkled along the way. And a quest chain in reality as its own unique quest mechanics would be a single player title.
Trying to put challenging content in between in a themepark with segregated end game, only slows down the player to their destination. So it makes it more frustrating not to enjoy the individual content or challenge.
Write bad things that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on a piece of marble
The original campaign in GW1 was quite a challenge to beat at first. You had to be very organized and have good builds to get through some of the missions, and still you would sometimes have to try 3-5 times before you got it. Very satisfying though. Then they toned down the difficulty significantly and offered a hard mode option later.
But you're right, usually in MMOs you can just out-level the content or bring more friends. Or the encounters are insanely stupid like the mobs have some instakill ability, have retarted amount of HP or you have to exploit the AI in some ways.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
The biggest difference that I see is that hardcore players need to play at every opportunity and casual players don't need to play at all. Also, hardcore players look to master every aspect of the game they are playing while casual players are content with just having fun.
At one point in my life I considered myself a hardcore gamer. I played at everyone moment that I could even if that ended up being 10-15 minutes. But, as I got older other things became a priority; first it was my wife and my job, and recently my son has taken up my time. So, now I am lucky if I get an hour a day. But, there are some games that I still consider myself hardcore b/c I want to be perfect at every aspect. The last game that did that to me was Civilization 4. That was before my son was born and it took my computer to stop working for me to step back and realize what that game had done to me.
Wildstar will be harcore, they bring back 40 men raids.
To me this is as hardcore as you can get...
ESO - ugh, world look good but the rest looks horrible
EQN - My mind already tells me this mmo will be a niche free to play action rpg with twitch combat.
Titan - i think i will have more gray hair then gandalf when it gets released.
So i think out of yout list Wildstar will be the only hardcore mmo.
Maybe FF ARR, i havent seen hardcore contend, but i know their lead developer Naoki Yoshida have some hardcore stuff for us waiting.
he is a extremely competitive player himself, was ranked #1 in DaoC.
So we might have 2 solid hardcore mmo's comming out soon
I just wish we had some more info from CCP about WOD......
If eve online is any indication then brace yourself....CCP does their own thing, they dont care for aiming to please causals, their stance is - dont like it ? gtfo and play Hello Kitty Island.
Time my friend......we need to wait for the realy good stuf a little more.
Sorry, I was talking (check the topic!) about MMOs and not pve instance grinders with 6 people max. Feel free to name any MMOs with such a slider. And no, I am not talking about hardmode instances being somehow comparable, I am looking for a MMO that's a challenge in its whole and not just in some kind of instance.
You didn't get the memo ... most MMO gameplay is in instances anyway. That is why D3 is pretty much close enough to a MMO for me.
MMOs should learn from D3. Difficulty sliders work perfectly in instances.
And it is not like there is no difficulty setting in MMOs. LFR/normal/hard mode raid. Dungeon difficulty in DDO. They should just do more.
its sad that dumb people with sawdust for brains and hamers as hands hold the biggest percentage
Would you say League Of Legends is casual or hardcore focus?
Both, yes?
Then why cant they make a mmorpg that is both hardcore and casual focus?
Is hardcore in a mmorpg different from a hardcore in League Of Legends?
Grinding mobs 24/7 to level your character is not hardcore.
Its boring.
This is more true than many would want to admit.
-Too few in numbers: obvious.
-Require too much attention: who screams the loudest on forums at the devs? Hardcore players who spend day and night arguing a 1-2% DPS increase/decrease or writing encyclopedias when they lose in PvP due to perceived "imbalance"
-Burn through content - hardcore are always first to the end, first to beat encounters, first to complain (and then drop sub and come to MMORPG.com and bitch the game has no content, even though they just spent 300+ hours in the game in a month)
And ya'll wonder why no one makes games for you?
Devs can only work so long and so hard for ingrates who don't show a lick of support or appreciation.
Eventually they realized "Hey!? We can make this game for the people who play 4-12 hours a week, make more money, not get yelled at and called morons all the time, and not have to work 24 hours a day?!?"
They probably can. They choose not to. They don't owe the hardcore players a game. It is a free market. If they determine they want to go after a more casual audience for whatever reason they like (more money, better ROI, less risk, easy ....), it is their prerogative.
There is zilch you can do about it.