Why did they become so easy? Main reason, I recon, is to cater to the main bulk of players, who, mindboggling enough for me, actually does not like the satisfaction of overcoming a hard obstacle or earning something.
However, enjoying Wildstar these days, the only game of late that I find challenges me and I keep learning
It is not like there aren't challenging game to play.
and there is no conflict between what "main bulk of players" and those who like very difficult games. Just play D3 .. most players can't get to high GR .. but there are very few in the world who can top GR chart, and even fewer who can do it in hardcore.
. Just mindlessly doing things because WoW does it that way is exactly the problem with the current generation on MMO games.
It is not a "problem" for devs if that is what players want. It is ONLY a problem for those who have a different preference.
...
Not that I'm saying you're alone in wanting easy brainless games but what evidence do you have that there is absolutely no market for something more challenging? The fact that WoW might have tried it in one dungeon and some players didn't like it is not evidence that no players anywhere want it.
Read carefully .. i said "It is not a problem for devs IF that is what players want".
I have no clue about what other wants. BUT is there a problem if devs only want to cater to those who like easier games? If they are successful and make money ... who are anyone here complain what devs should or should not do?
Blaming Blizz is the worse .. they makes tons of money .. and presumably provides fun to millions. So if you don't like their games, you are not obligated to play it. But at the same time, it is silly to blame them for the fact that you don't have a game you like. They are under no obligation to provide fun to any audience but their choosing.
Once again you are not addressing my actual points at all. I never said companies shouldn't make easy games or blamed Blizzard for anything. Please tell me where you are getting any of that from in my posts. There is a market for easy games but there is also a market for more difficult games and you have not presented any kind of actual evidence that such a market doesn't exist.
. Just mindlessly doing things because WoW does it that way is exactly the problem with the current generation on MMO games.
It is not a "problem" for devs if that is what players want. It is ONLY a problem for those who have a different preference.
...
Not that I'm saying you're alone in wanting easy brainless games but what evidence do you have that there is absolutely no market for something more challenging? The fact that WoW might have tried it in one dungeon and some players didn't like it is not evidence that no players anywhere want it.
Read carefully .. i said "It is not a problem for devs IF that is what players want".
I have no clue about what other wants. BUT is there a problem if devs only want to cater to those who like easier games? If they are successful and make money ... who are anyone here complain what devs should or should not do?
Blaming Blizz is the worse .. they makes tons of money .. and presumably provides fun to millions. So if you don't like their games, you are not obligated to play it. But at the same time, it is silly to blame them for the fact that you don't have a game you like. They are under no obligation to provide fun to any audience but their choosing.
Once again you are not addressing my actual points at all. I never said companies shouldn't make easy games or blamed Blizzard for anything. Please tell me where you are getting any of that from in my posts. There is a market for easy games but there is also a market for more difficult games and you have not presented any kind of actual evidence that such a market doesn't exist.
and once again you are not addressing my point. Where did i say a market of more difficult games does NOT exist? (In fact, D3 is a good example that it does).
I am merely pointing out that there is "no problem" if *some* devs do not want to participate in that market. It is a free market.
Developers have learned and games evolved - got rid of undesirable features/content.
This a thousand times over. All too often rigidity and time stamping is sold as hard. Not even by development but by players.There is no hard in a video game. Making the rotations to clear content a mile long with no margin for error doesn't change that. Anyone remember the 4 button Simon says game with memory based color sequence? Yea, that with better graphics. That's what we do.
It doesn't take away from video games. They are fun when they are designed to be fun. They are boring as hell when they are designed that way. Video games exceeded their learning curve. Play them for the eye candy. It has just as much entertainment value, just not the same kind.
Therefor, I have to say people do get better through repetition. Even the pro's on LoL will tell you this.
That you had to rely on the fact that the enemy players were effectively noobs while you've played for who knows how long only exacerbates the absurdity of the situation.
EDIT2: Didn't really change the point that skill mastery is a repetitious endeavor, and ultimately it's a rather finite set of rules and abilities you are learning. Not gonna learn how to kill things as a rogue and suddenly use that knowledge and skill to complete a platformer.
I didn't have to rely on them being noobs to win. They were higher level characters than me, with higher skills. What I meant by mastered my class is I had all my skills, distance, timing, cooldowns, and everything all ingrained in muscle memory. They did not have this "skill" of muscle memory play-style at the subconscious level. I had also dealt with griefers nonstop for years, and always being behind the curve. I've learned all the gorilla warfare tactics needed to survive in that unforgiving game.
EDIT: So I guess I should say good job punching some babies, really proves you have skill.
Also you should know, not only where they higher level (with 3x better buffs on than me), but they came to gank me (because they were griefers). At the time, I was trying to kill 500 monsters for one of the quests needed to get my 3rd class change. The server didn't nick name me "the raid boss" for nothing.
All that proves, which Devios said, is that they weren't skilled players.
If you're in a 5 v 1 situation consisting of equally skilled players and the one wins then:
a) You were playing not very skilled players (babies in Deivos analogy).
b) You were playing an over powered class that was designed to take on large groups of enemies (which I'm not against in OWPvP, there should be imbalances in that environment)
c) They were having connection issues.
If you were playing equally skilled players you wouldn't win.
You're only validating my commentary. You were the one that claimed the players were autoed up or purchased, and regardless of their character's skills and gear that puts them at an immediate and great disparity to be trying to establish any meaningful argument off of.
By your own claim, if they were even average players with reasonable familiarity with the game then they probably would have had more than just a chance against you. Instead, you explained what was a blatantly biased scenario.
You were effectively just saying you whacked a bunch of nitwits that didn't know what they were doing.
Not to mention I was not discrediting the existence of player skill as a thing. Your commentary was a rather sideways point to begin with as the topic, as you even quoted, was that "skill mastery" or achieving a high level of familiarity with a game is itself a very repetitive endeavor to memorize a finite set of mechanics. Your anecdote is pretty good evidence of that really as it's highlighting your endless grinding of mobs and incidental PvP was your driver. If you didn't have that perpetual train of mobs to kill and random gankers/etc (aka, all the repetitious stuff) would you be in the same state of skill mastery?
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
The first is that difficulty has gone out of style. The customers MMO developers are chasing after these days seem far more interested in the rewards offered for accomplishing a task than they are in the satisfaction gained from accomplishing tasks. The biggest reason I don't even think about WoW anymore is the state of their heroic 5 man dungeons. I started in BC and carried myself through the badge grind on a survival hunter. I /lfg'd a lot in the channels for it but eventually found a regular group which wound up burning through every dungeon every day fast as fuck because we learned our roles and abused the shit out of CC. I'm not saying it was the most difficult thing but I did take some pride and gained satisfaction from the fact that I could easily keep two mobs frozen trapped for the duration of a fight while either kiting another or doing max damage on the target marked with a skull. I liked that shit was hard enough that you could get your ass kicked if you didn't know what you were doing. It wasn't perfect, classes that had no hard CC had trouble finding a group for heroic Mr. T but that wasn't terrible because those Breeching Comets were mine, dirty enh shammies. With Wrath it was just massive pulls and aoe spam fests. Yes it made the real point of grinding tokens easier but it removed the tiny bit of skill and concentration required while grinding. The big problem was that WotLK 5 mans set the tone for the next expansions because Wrath babies were never asked to learn how to play their classes effectively. So whenever blizzard tried to make 5 mans moderately difficult from then on they ran into a storm of tears from their player base and had to change stuff. They had to make CC not aggro groups of mobs for people who never learned how to use their cc at the start and for tanks who never learned how to pull. They had to just nerf the shit out of pulls so that coordinated CC was hardly needed. People who never learned how to play difficult heroics just wanted their tokens and that's it, so they're easy as fuck now.
The second reason is that MMOs were never actually that good at being difficult. Requiring a lot of time out people, or lucky roles or skill at managing people so that everyone shows up isn't necessarily the right kind of difficulty. All you ever needed to do anything outside of chasing world firsts were reliable people with a lot of time and the willingness to do the most basic research about class rotations, proper itemization and encounter mechanics.
and once again you are not addressing my point. Where did i say a market of more difficult games does NOT exist? (In fact, D3 is a good example that it does).
I am merely pointing out that there is "no problem" if *some* devs do not want to participate in that market. It is a free market.
Fine I guess we agree on that then because I have never argued against what you are saying.
Your original "point" when we were discussing more developed AI was to come in and say "WoW already tried that. Players didn't like it." Were you not implying that no other company should try to improve AI because apparently the fact that it wasn't received too well in one WoW dungeon is proof to you that there is absolutely no market for it? That implication is what I was originally objecting to.
The MMORPG is going through an identity crisis, brought on by many factors. There appears to be a large shift toward MOBA and FPS gameplay while retaining the "RPG" moniker. There is also the stereotyping of casual gamers, clumping most if not all under the time limited banner instead of the actual play style. This and others have led to the MMORPG warping into something unrecognizable and vaguely disappointing to many fans of the genre. The only logical fix that I see as a necessity is that developers need to embrace niche gaming and create a portfolio of niche games where the aggregate delivers the income they have come to expect from singular games like World of Warcraft. It's not just hardcores vs. casuals, it's twitchers vs. stat lovers, shallow arcade lobbies vs. virtual world....etc. There's a good reason why these play styles have been catered to separately in the past and it should continue into the future. Homogenization is stifling the uniqueness of the MMORPG.
The MMORPG is going through an identity crisis, brought on by many factors. There appears to be a large shift toward MOBA and FPS gameplay while retaining the "RPG" moniker. There is also the stereotyping of casual gamers, clumping most if not all under the time limited banner instead of the actual play style. This and others have led to the MMORPG warping into something unrecognizable and vaguely disappointing to many fans of the genre. The only logical fix that I see as a necessity is that developers need to embrace niche gaming and create a portfolio of niche games where the aggregate delivers the income they have come to expect from singular games like World of Warcraft. It's not just hardcores vs. casuals, it's twitchers vs. stat lovers, shallow arcade lobbies vs. virtual world....etc. There's a good reason why these play styles have been catered to separately in the past and it should continue into the future. Homogenization is stifling the uniqueness of the MMORPG.
unrecognizable = new & innovative ... what is wrong with that?
If it disappoints some of the old veterans, and delight many many more new players, is that a bad thing?
I would much rather companies go in new direction (like Blizz, make FPS & card games) and try new games, than be constrained by MMORPG design.
And in fact, there is NO homogenization. MOBAs, FPSes with some RPG elements, instanced pvp games like WoT, card games ... are all VERY different games. And they can provide very different experiences to players. And most are no longer designed to eat up all your time, so you can experience many different games.
I would say this beat the old MMORPG design by a mile .. for my preferences, of course.
The MMORPG is going through an identity crisis, brought on by many factors. There appears to be a large shift toward MOBA and FPS gameplay while retaining the "RPG" moniker. There is also the stereotyping of casual gamers, clumping most if not all under the time limited banner instead of the actual play style. This and others have led to the MMORPG warping into something unrecognizable and vaguely disappointing to many fans of the genre. The only logical fix that I see as a necessity is that developers need to embrace niche gaming and create a portfolio of niche games where the aggregate delivers the income they have come to expect from singular games like World of Warcraft. It's not just hardcores vs. casuals, it's twitchers vs. stat lovers, shallow arcade lobbies vs. virtual world....etc. There's a good reason why these play styles have been catered to separately in the past and it should continue into the future. Homogenization is stifling the uniqueness of the MMORPG.
unrecognizable = new & innovative ... what is wrong with that?
If it disappoints some of the old veterans, and delight many many more new players, is that a bad thing?
I would much rather companies go in new direction (like Blizz, make FPS & card games) and try new games, than be constrained by MMORPG design.
And in fact, there is NO homogenization. MOBAs, FPSes with some RPG elements, instanced pvp games like WoT, card games ... are all VERY different games. And they can provide very different experiences to players. And most are no longer designed to eat up all your time, so you can experience many different games.
I would say this beat the old MMORPG design by a mile .. for my preferences, of course.
So many of the newer games are unrecognizable as MMORPGs. Most have become FPS with some RPG tacked on and or instanced lobby games with no virtual world simulation. We're losing the depth and detail and complexity that were expected in virtual world simulated gaming. You obviously like the new stuff as do others, but there are still many like me who also want some real representation in a genre that has become so very arcade.
unrecognizable = new & innovative ... what is wrong with that?
If it disappoints some of the old veterans, and delight many many more new players, is that a bad thing?
I would much rather companies go in new direction (like Blizz, make FPS & card games) and try new games, than be constrained by MMORPG design.
And in fact, there is NO homogenization. MOBAs, FPSes with some RPG elements, instanced pvp games like WoT, card games ... are all VERY different games. And they can provide very different experiences to players. And most are no longer designed to eat up all your time, so you can experience many different games.
I would say this beat the old MMORPG design by a mile .. for my preferences, of course.
So many of the newer games are unrecognizable as MMORPGs. Most have become FPS with some RPG tacked on and or instanced lobby games with no virtual world simulation. We're losing the depth and detail and complexity that were expected in virtual world simulated gaming. You obviously like the new stuff as do others, but there are still many like me who also want some real representation in a genre that has become so very arcade.
So all you are saying is that you don't like the new stuff. Whether it is "real" or not is immaterial .. because the genre has changed.
It is a free market. Devs don't owe me a game I like. Devs don't owe you a game you like. So again, what is the problem? You certainly can want games that you like (who doesn't) but no one is obligated to provide you with one, right?
Comments
It is not like there aren't challenging game to play.
and there is no conflict between what "main bulk of players" and those who like very difficult games. Just play D3 .. most players can't get to high GR .. but there are very few in the world who can top GR chart, and even fewer who can do it in hardcore.
Once again you are not addressing my actual points at all. I never said companies shouldn't make easy games or blamed Blizzard for anything. Please tell me where you are getting any of that from in my posts. There is a market for easy games but there is also a market for more difficult games and you have not presented any kind of actual evidence that such a market doesn't exist.
The problem with mmorpg is the combat vs mobs. Too easy, see gw2, archeage.. Spam 1 and winwin. We need more mmorpg with teso combat
I am merely pointing out that there is "no problem" if *some* devs do not want to participate in that market. It is a free market.
Or just do away with the quest ideas like D3. There is no walking to your objective .. you fight to it.
This a thousand times over. All too often rigidity and time stamping is sold as hard. Not even by development but by players.There is no hard in a video game. Making the rotations to clear content a mile long with no margin for error doesn't change that. Anyone remember the 4 button Simon says game with memory based color sequence? Yea, that with better graphics. That's what we do.
It doesn't take away from video games. They are fun when they are designed to be fun. They are boring as hell when they are designed that way. Video games exceeded their learning curve. Play them for the eye candy. It has just as much entertainment value, just not the same kind.
If you're in a 5 v 1 situation consisting of equally skilled players and the one wins then:
a) You were playing not very skilled players (babies in Deivos analogy).
b) You were playing an over powered class that was designed to take on large groups of enemies (which I'm not against in OWPvP, there should be imbalances in that environment)
c) They were having connection issues.
If you were playing equally skilled players you wouldn't win.
By your own claim, if they were even average players with reasonable familiarity with the game then they probably would have had more than just a chance against you. Instead, you explained what was a blatantly biased scenario.
You were effectively just saying you whacked a bunch of nitwits that didn't know what they were doing.
Not to mention I was not discrediting the existence of player skill as a thing. Your commentary was a rather sideways point to begin with as the topic, as you even quoted, was that "skill mastery" or achieving a high level of familiarity with a game is itself a very repetitive endeavor to memorize a finite set of mechanics. Your anecdote is pretty good evidence of that really as it's highlighting your endless grinding of mobs and incidental PvP was your driver. If you didn't have that perpetual train of mobs to kill and random gankers/etc (aka, all the repetitious stuff) would you be in the same state of skill mastery?
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
The first is that difficulty has gone out of style. The customers MMO developers are chasing after these days seem far more interested in the rewards offered for accomplishing a task than they are in the satisfaction gained from accomplishing tasks. The biggest reason I don't even think about WoW anymore is the state of their heroic 5 man dungeons. I started in BC and carried myself through the badge grind on a survival hunter. I /lfg'd a lot in the channels for it but eventually found a regular group which wound up burning through every dungeon every day fast as fuck because we learned our roles and abused the shit out of CC. I'm not saying it was the most difficult thing but I did take some pride and gained satisfaction from the fact that I could easily keep two mobs frozen trapped for the duration of a fight while either kiting another or doing max damage on the target marked with a skull. I liked that shit was hard enough that you could get your ass kicked if you didn't know what you were doing. It wasn't perfect, classes that had no hard CC had trouble finding a group for heroic Mr. T but that wasn't terrible because those Breeching Comets were mine, dirty enh shammies. With Wrath it was just massive pulls and aoe spam fests. Yes it made the real point of grinding tokens easier but it removed the tiny bit of skill and concentration required while grinding. The big problem was that WotLK 5 mans set the tone for the next expansions because Wrath babies were never asked to learn how to play their classes effectively. So whenever blizzard tried to make 5 mans moderately difficult from then on they ran into a storm of tears from their player base and had to change stuff. They had to make CC not aggro groups of mobs for people who never learned how to use their cc at the start and for tanks who never learned how to pull. They had to just nerf the shit out of pulls so that coordinated CC was hardly needed. People who never learned how to play difficult heroics just wanted their tokens and that's it, so they're easy as fuck now.
The second reason is that MMOs were never actually that good at being difficult. Requiring a lot of time out people, or lucky roles or skill at managing people so that everyone shows up isn't necessarily the right kind of difficulty. All you ever needed to do anything outside of chasing world firsts were reliable people with a lot of time and the willingness to do the most basic research about class rotations, proper itemization and encounter mechanics.
"Negaholics are people who become addicted to negativity and self-doubt, they find fault in most things and never seem to be satisfied."
^MMORPG.com
Fine I guess we agree on that then because I have never argued against what you are saying.
Your original "point" when we were discussing more developed AI was to come in and say "WoW already tried that. Players didn't like it." Were you not implying that no other company should try to improve AI because apparently the fact that it wasn't received too well in one WoW dungeon is proof to you that there is absolutely no market for it? That implication is what I was originally objecting to.
You get a game that's trying to be the jack of all trades, inevitably it becomes master of none.
So many of the newer games are unrecognizable as MMORPGs. Most have become FPS with some RPG tacked on and or instanced lobby games with no virtual world simulation. We're losing the depth and detail and complexity that were expected in virtual world simulated gaming. You obviously like the new stuff as do others, but there are still many like me who also want some real representation in a genre that has become so very arcade.
It is a free market. Devs don't owe me a game I like. Devs don't owe you a game you like. So again, what is the problem? You certainly can want games that you like (who doesn't) but no one is obligated to provide you with one, right?