"We' generally are a group of people who find ourselves slightly above the curve. We felt board in school and either excelled or dropped out completely. We don't find solace in the medium or the short. As people, we always find the added history or hidden meanings and cherish those as the thing we do as opposed to the actual thing we do. As players we find the absolute finite boarders of our games frustrating. As a market, as a derived base to direct marketing to.. it takes us well before gaming to see we have always been channeled down a narrowing path in -any industry- that supports us. This is not due to our lack of trying to support a methodology that caters to our wants. Nor is it the bigger picture that clouds out our dollars obscuring them in a haze of mediocrity. We ask question. We want answers. We call support with a system in mind to find an end result. That for any industry is an added work load and changing a laid out plan once it is in motion. So they waylay us. They change the product to harass us even. To attempt to change our bias and form us into something less hands on to appease.
That said, right now marketers and capitol engineers have lost a major staple in overt ads. I dont know about you but my devices all have adblock enabled. So does everyone else! That means the people who pursue ideas to their finite ends learn and love the histories and lores around their products and are the -difficult ones- are finding themselves at the head of the new market era. We post reviews! Most people couldn't be bothered. But they are the main engine of marketing right now. Right now the tables are turning for us. Marketers are finding not only to we help produce higher quality but the average person takes what we say -above- a marketers drivel. Games are getting more difficult slowly but it is important that we understand why. People who investigate and review and post to youtube and social media are the drive behind advertisements today so I encourage you to be that drive and be that tool because in the end it will be a product molded by you instead of some marketing degree sap that has never even seen the end product much less enjoy one
Very insightful post. Maybe your old guild leader is one of the very vocal pantheon advocates who can't wait to lord it over others again. When I hear some of the things these vocal advocates say, and how they say them, it reminds me of those people like your guild leader.
And that is why I have no intention of playing Pantheon. Because I'm afraid that is exactly what is happening. The people who dominated EQ miss their glory days and here comes Brad to bring the glory back for them. The problem is that the type of endgame they want will only appeal to a tiny, tiny number of people and the rest just won't put up with it these days like they did back when.
I should be in their target demographic because I actually want the type of game they are making, warts and all, except for what the endgame is going to be. Knowing what the endgame will be like kills any motivation I have to play the game at all even though I would probably love the pre-endgame part.
So, essentially, what they are doing is looking at a niche demographic and then picking out a niche from within that niche, and THAT is the tiny, tiny demographic they are building a game to appeal to.
Pantheon isn't about "end game". Raiding will be a small portion of content, probably on par with early EQ. That probably means some part of it will be more casual friendly, but in general, it's not meant for everyone to do. I know that's just crazy at a time where everyone demands and expects everything to be given to them, but that's the way it will be.
You can't design a game to accommodate casual players with the most exclusive content. That will make everything seem too mundane, and kill the mystery and achievement that drives people to continue playing. See MMOs made past 2007 for examples.
There is one problem with your last statement.
Pantheon is going to successfully KEEP the group it is targeting... and they all will be +15 MMORPG pros who will access the entire game. But the other group, you are talking about 2016 casuals who do not fear game detachment... and what do these 2016 casuals do when the brick wall hits them? Leave... can't celebrate exclusivity that way.
I think most of the most casual will skip Pantheon as they tend to like F2P games. I think Pantheonis buy plus sub. Something I'm looking forward to personally.
Which is fine!
What I'm getting at (for the ones who are looking at being in the 5%) is the ones who will stick with Pantheon will be veterans of the genre, and will more than likely all be able to complete all raids. There may be disappointment when they realize the lack of any exclusivity at all... if that's what they are looking for.
What I'm getting at (for the ones who are looking at being in the 5%) is the ones who will stick with Pantheon will be veterans of the genre, and will more than likely all be able to complete all raids. There may be disappointment when they realize the lack of any exclusivity at all... if that's what they are looking for.
That's basically what I was saying too.
To restate it in simple terms. If you want to flip the finger to the filthy casuals and tell them that they are not worthy of having anything to do at the endgame that's fine but don't expect many of them to stay around and keep paying a subscription fee. This ain't 1999 and you people who dream that it will happen that way again are just delusional.
That's what I meant when I said that Pantheon will end up with a lower population than P99.
Tedium is something but there is challenge over time. It challenges your patience. Which is a reasonable challenge imo. If an adult can't handle that, well...
Why not just watch paint dry, or the grass grow if you want to challenge your patience?
I think when people say tedium, they mean, I need fast fights, and fast this and that. No down time. Like little bits of heroin to get them high and addicted. This 15 minutes online at a time thing too.
In this context? I suggest not. They mean no 15 minute waits for boats, 20 minutes crossing the Karanas etc.
Fights are pretty much the same across most games; sometimes crafting is tedious for no reason; the biggie though - and were games can differ a lot - is travel. It was to slow in EQ1 whereas WoW could almost be a lobby game.
I have to say the Elder Scrolls Online is a fairly good game. I didn't like it when I first tried it, but I've been trying various different MMOs recently and it's been improved a lot. It's more like the single player Skyrim experience now. It also has a lot of options for each class. You can make each one into healer, DPS, or CC, or Tank. You can also choose a specific tree like the Nightblade Siphon tree and make a Necromancer or Shadow Knight out of it. I guess the main thing is not to worry about the class names to much. I almost wish there were no classes and they just had the various class skill trees available to everyone on the same character. The names are a bit misleading to what they can actually become. The has fun combat and a slow level progression. The exploration is fairly good. The only thing missing is fun utility spells like bind soul, speed increase, levitation, and water breathing.
By level 25 of ESO, I had realized that I had gone to 30 consecutive quest hubs consisting of some combination of kill quests (usually 2) and a collection quest (usually 1) followed by being redirected to the next quest hub. It became so repetitive that it was insulting and I bailed.
I've had this discussion many times and most people can't explain an acceptable solution or provide a good answer to this major issue that game developers/designers face in MMORPGs.
Does time equate to difficulty? If so, then how does a brand new player who is interested in playing the game 3-6 months after the game has launched EVER catch up to a player who has been playing consistently at launch? If majority of the player base has reached mid-game and new players wants to play with other people, how is that bridge gapped in an intuitive way?
This is the core issue that most MMORPGs face that WoW addressed in the most acceptable way that players enjoy.
Older MMORPGS tried to fix this by introducing features that most people didn't like
1. EXP boost potions 2. Changing Elite mobs into normal ones (reducing HP and constant game balancing) 3. Changing the EXP curves to make it easier in early zones 4. Companions or NPC assists 5. Bypass specific areas via soloable content 6. Special quests to give you legendaries or strong items (enough stats to kill elites and bosses without partying). 7. Instant boosts to max or near max levels 8. Specific newbie skills/buffers 9. Create auto pathing (future proofing for new players after the player base matures).
World of Warcraft is popular (continues to make tons of money) because it's easy for new players to get into the game. Players are able to create 20+ alt characters if they wanted too. The entire game is designed to cater around casual players who play 1-2 hours a day (westerners stay at their jobs for 8-12 hours a day)
It's impossible to sustain ongoing costs of a AAA MMORPG (servers, CS, new content development 50+ total staff minimum) without new players constantly coming in to play the game and spending (subs, item mall, etc).
Here is a good example of my situation since my friends want me to play BnS instead of WoW, SWTOR or TERA. Why would I want to play a game like BnS right now as a new player when I'll be soloing by myself majority of its content until I finally meet minimum requirements to grind with the rest of the mature playerbase.
Other MMORPGs don't know how to fix this or implemented a "micky-mouse" fix that put band-aid fixes to try and address this. This is why the idea of end-game content became a "thing". Game developers decided to make progression easy so that most people who play 1-5 hours a day can get to max level. The companies marketed this as "the real game starts at max level".
Another thing, if game developers can't get new players into the game to enjoy it, then they need to make sure they generate money from the existing playerbase HENCE The PAY2WIN approach or constant aggressive sales of powerful upgrades/items (end game content that is constantly designed to get you to spend). Bugs and reports of issues at lower content levels (dungeons, bosses, quests, NPCs, zones) are ignored because not enough players encounter it (no new players remember).
Feel free to propose ideas on how to fix this problem. Games were even solely designed to addressed this issue and are marginally successful at best. (Darkfall, The Secret World, Elder Scrolls MMO, etc). These games get approved for development because they explain how they're going to specifically address this. Some companies do the extreme and do non-linear progressions and even demote (items, levels, skills, etc.) their mature playerbase (since they are loyal and addicted that they will re-grind of course.)
You want developers to create a serious game? Well, propose a serious solution other than what WoW did to fix this (WoW constantly re-did their entire 1-60 experience, re-did talents, skills, continued to redo dungeons, LFD tools, etc. They had the funds and backing of a huge corporation to do this).
Um, ok you're like the 15th person to respond with the difficulty = time argument so I'm going to address this now.
I want a more difficult game. I didn't say I want Dark Souls XXIV. I want a more difficult game than sparkle farts for logging in and getting flashed by Korean anime chicks for auto pathing to the next quest npc. Ok so I'll give an example:
Typical modern MMO quest: Kill 10 Toxic Slimes. (wham bap, aoe kills 34 slimes, quest done, flashed by anime girl who farts sparkles while simultaneously orgasming next to me and I get 4 level ups)
Ideal difficult MMO quest: Kill 10 Toxic Slimes. (battle ensues, monsters need to be lured and fought carefully and have a chance at dropping decent loot, have to use a mechanic to avoid being killed by the toxicity of the slimes. Go back to turn in quest, thanked for helping and given a very small reward that doesn't really affect my game progression)
The focus of the quest was meant to teach me a mechanic dealing with a difficult monster, not to skip me to the next zone's level. Now that I've learned the mechanic I'm actually better at my character and I understand how some of the components flow. It turns out those slimes have a chance at dropping rare crafting mats and a smaller chance of a really good weapon, now I can more efficiently farm them while relaxing and listening to music and simultaneously get some gradual XP towards my next level.
I didn't log in to get 13 levels today, I logged in to relax and chat with my guildies while I gather these mats, and might get something rare and useful while I'm at it. If something rare drops that I can't use I can sell it and buy extras of the mats I was looking for.
Our game style was the original MMO style. It wasn't some huge race to bask in the floating sparkles of anime orgasm-farts, it was a place to chill and work towards something relatively difficult. Yes there's the guy who spends 23.5 hours a day and has better stuff than any of us and that's ok we can deal with that. He's super man, hero boy, we diss him in the 30 minutes a day he's offline. I don't want them to rebuild the entire game so that he can't do it.
I know reading this sounds REALLY awful to some people and THAT'S OK I'M NOT DISSING YOU. There's 64,000 games catering to you already and like jack shit nothing catering to us people who want what you guys consider ' A SHITTY GAME '. Try saying this 'Make a game I don't like and I won't play it, but I'll be happy for the people who enjoy it.' It's not that complicated, there's a crowd of us, it's not the World of Warcraft, but it's enough to keep a decent size company up and running if they catered.
Um, ok you're like the 15th person to respond with the difficulty = time argument so I'm going to address this now.
I want a more difficult game. I didn't say I want Dark Souls XXIV. I want a more difficult game than sparkle farts for logging in and getting flashed by Korean anime chicks for auto pathing to the next quest npc. Ok so I'll give an example:
Typical modern MMO quest: Kill 10 Toxic Slimes. (wham bap, aoe kills 34 slimes, quest done, flashed by anime girl who farts sparkles while simultaneously orgasming next to me and I get 4 level ups)
Ideal difficult MMO quest: Kill 10 Toxic Slimes. (battle ensues, monsters need to be lured and fought carefully and have a chance at dropping decent loot, have to use a mechanic to avoid being killed by the toxicity of the slimes. Go back to turn in quest, thanked for helping and given a very small reward that doesn't really affect my game progression)
The focus of the quest was meant to teach me a mechanic dealing with a difficult monster, not to skip me to the next zone's level. Now that I've learned the mechanic I'm actually better at my character and I understand how some of the components flow. It turns out those slimes have a chance at dropping rare crafting mats and a smaller chance of a really good weapon, now I can more efficiently farm them while relaxing and listening to music and simultaneously get some gradual XP towards my next level.
I didn't log in to get 13 levels today, I logged in to relax and chat with my guildies while I gather these mats, and might get something rare and useful while I'm at it. If something rare drops that I can't use I can sell it and buy extras of the mats I was looking for.
Our game style was the original MMO style. It wasn't some huge race to bask in the floating sparkles of anime orgasm-farts, it was a place to chill and work towards something relatively difficult. Yes there's the guy who spends 23.5 hours a day and has better stuff than any of us and that's ok we can deal with that. He's super man, hero boy, we diss him in the 30 minutes a day he's offline. I don't want them to rebuild the entire game so that he can't do it.
I know reading this sounds REALLY awful to some people and THAT'S OK I'M NOT DISSING YOU. There's 64,000 games catering to you already and like jack shit nothing catering to us people who want what you guys consider ' A SHITTY GAME '. Try saying this 'Make a game I don't like and I won't play it, but I'll be happy for the people who enjoy it.' It's not that complicated, there's a crowd of us, it's not the World of Warcraft, but it's enough to keep a decent size company up and running if they catered.
The problem, as I see it, is that this is where things get murky, do you let people have the ability to solo in this original MMO style or do you lock this content behind forced groups/guilds that some people seem to equate with community?
I never did get to "endgame" in UO, I was always playing catch up to those who spent their bathroom breaks poring over maps and charts to min/max the best way to "win", so I can't tell you whether all the endgame content was artificially locked or whether the game itself by virtue of the difficulty made grouping desirable. (ie. world boss, dungeons where you never knew if the spawn rate could and did almost always overwhelm you, the need for other class abilities than a single player could have like needing a high level thief to open that last chest, etc.)
I do recall one where you needed six or eight? different players for one of the puzzles to open the gate to the dungeon, but most of the world used to be unlocked and if you were a Leroy Jenkins you were able to attempt pretty much anything solo, just usually unsuccessfully. Crafting was the same, you could either level up numerous alts to become mostly self sufficient(thus taking longer than say a group of friends or a guild would) because you needed components from different higher level professions, that were all restricted with hard caps as to the number of max level proficiencies a single character could have.
I know many players seem to prefer a system where they could do it all on one character(ie. FF) but some of us liked having to make those specialized alts, as tedious as it may seem, as opposed to joining some drama filled guild just to have access to the majority of the content in the game and we are willing to lag behind the "elites", we just don't want to get totally left behind or have the game dumbed down to "let" us play the game, imo.
Oh and I also disagree with multi-boxing in a mmorpg, just like I think you should only be able to login one character at a time. However, instead of coding this into the game and punishing those who try to bend the rules, devs ignore the damage this kind of game play does to the game. Whether it's because they just don't know how to deal with it or don't want to lose that customer I don't know, but I know a lot of players that will not play a game where they're expected to be able to compete with someone that is able to have a set up where they're using multiple characters all at the same time to do the same thing. The games that require both characters online at the same time to do certain things only compound the problem and imo leave a loophole for those who do multi-box to make a case for why they should be able to do so.
Sorry for the wall of text but if you made it this far, I'm basically in favour of the harder mechanics of the older mmorpgs but not in favour of forced grouping, just call me Leroy?
MMOs are in a drought because they're becoming boring af. It's too bad they're not easier to make so we could get some more indies to come up with interesting gameplay.
Very insightful post. Maybe your old guild leader is one of the very vocal pantheon advocates who can't wait to lord it over others again. When I hear some of the things these vocal advocates say, and how they say them, it reminds me of those people like your guild leader.
And that is why I have no intention of playing Pantheon. Because I'm afraid that is exactly what is happening. The people who dominated EQ miss their glory days and here comes Brad to bring the glory back for them. The problem is that the type of endgame they want will only appeal to a tiny, tiny number of people and the rest just won't put up with it these days like they did back when.
I should be in their target demographic because I actually want the type of game they are making, warts and all, except for what the endgame is going to be. Knowing what the endgame will be like kills any motivation I have to play the game at all even though I would probably love the pre-endgame part.
So, essentially, what they are doing is looking at a niche demographic and then picking out a niche from within that niche, and THAT is the tiny, tiny demographic they are building a game to appeal to.
Pantheon isn't about "end game". Raiding will be a small portion of content, probably on par with early EQ. That probably means some part of it will be more casual friendly, but in general, it's not meant for everyone to do. I know that's just crazy at a time where everyone demands and expects everything to be given to them, but that's the way it will be.
You can't design a game to accommodate casual players with the most exclusive content. That will make everything seem too mundane, and kill the mystery and achievement that drives people to continue playing. See MMOs made past 2007 for examples.
There is one problem with your last statement.
Pantheon is going to successfully KEEP the group it is targeting... and they all will be +15 MMORPG pros who will access the entire game. But the other group, you are talking about 2016 casuals who do not fear game detachment... and what do these 2016 casuals do when the brick wall hits them? Leave... can't celebrate exclusivity that way.
I am very intrigued at where the line will be between solo-centric and group-based (small group as well) activities. They may be able to find activities that engage even if not raiding and doing typical end game activities. Maybe they will have "end game" activities that don't involve grouping with others.
When push comes to shove it sounds like they will stick to their group preferred model which I think is great. The industry can use a modern version of that. We should celebrate gameplay diversity.
Plus nothing is written in stone, they can always adjust their model if it appears to not be working out. Unless, they take a do it this way or die stance.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
I guess its different what kind of challenges people look for in MMORPGs.
Personally I prefer the kind of challenge I get from creating / customizing something to a kind of perfection. I dont need a reward for it, the creation I make is the reward.
Gear hunting just for the sake of some stats, or taking on harder and harder bosses, I find that very tedious.
What I do like also though is to grind for mats, that raiders need, while the game still supplies items Id like to have, so I have something to spend my gold on.
Circle of life that way is great I find. I do the things raiders find tedious, so they wont have to deal with that, and raiders should have plenty of content to do, so I dont end up without players to grind for.
We all need each other, so there has to be content for all of us in one and same game, imo anyway.
"MMORPGs are in a drought because I'm an elitist prick who thinks having absorbent amounts of time and disposable income is a rewardable talent. My douche nozzle investment is what rewards companies for making bad games. BTW I didn't write this I have a macro that did. Get gud." -That Guy In Every MMORPG
"As far as the forum code of conduct, I would think it's a bit outdated and in need of a refre *CLOSED*"
if you are a dev do you try to raise multiple millions of dollars, throw away your personal life for 5 years before launch then 5 years afterward...for a game that will see most people quitting within a month? Or do you raise a third of the money, have a life and just make a single player game? Or some mobile game....which will make just as much money and you get to have a life?
mmorpg generation, those of us who were involved with the golden age of mmorpgs...we all grew up....and the next generation would rather play LOL+Overwatch+steam games than deal with a game that tries to do it all and make everyone happy but fails across the board.
Think of all the single player RPG;s that would have been classics but instead were made to mmorpgs...that failed and shut down and no one can ever enjoy again....mmorpgs was sort of a bad idea imo...so much wasted time and effort and so many of them no one will ever enjoy again...while a single player came could have existed forever without constant support and online servers. Just think about that.
20 years from now theres going to be a dark hole in gaming during this period from all the developers who made mmorpgs that no longer exist and no one can play.
Comments
As a market, as a derived base to direct marketing to.. it takes us well before gaming to see we have always been channeled down a narrowing path in -any industry- that supports us. This is not due to our lack of trying to support a methodology that caters to our wants. Nor is it the bigger picture that clouds out our dollars obscuring them in a haze of mediocrity.
We ask question. We want answers. We call support with a system in mind to find an end result. That for any industry is an added work load and changing a laid out plan once it is in motion. So they waylay us. They change the product to harass us even. To attempt to change our bias and form us into something less hands on to appease.
That said, right now marketers and capitol engineers have lost a major staple in overt ads. I dont know about you but my devices all have adblock enabled. So does everyone else! That means the people who pursue ideas to their finite ends learn and love the histories and lores around their products and are the -difficult ones- are finding themselves at the head of the new market era.
We post reviews!
Most people couldn't be bothered. But they are the main engine of marketing right now. Right now the tables are turning for us. Marketers are finding not only to we help produce higher quality but the average person takes what we say -above- a marketers drivel.
Games are getting more difficult slowly but it is important that we understand why. People who investigate and review and post to youtube and social media are the drive behind advertisements today so I encourage you to be that drive and be that tool because in the end it will be a product molded by you instead of some marketing degree sap that has never even seen the end product much less enjoy one
What I'm getting at (for the ones who are looking at being in the 5%) is the ones who will stick with Pantheon will be veterans of the genre, and will more than likely all be able to complete all raids. There may be disappointment when they realize the lack of any exclusivity at all... if that's what they are looking for.
That's basically what I was saying too.
To restate it in simple terms. If you want to flip the finger to the filthy casuals and tell them that they are not worthy of having anything to do at the endgame that's fine but don't expect many of them to stay around and keep paying a subscription fee. This ain't 1999 and you people who dream that it will happen that way again are just delusional.
That's what I meant when I said that Pantheon will end up with a lower population than P99.
Fights are pretty much the same across most games; sometimes crafting is tedious for no reason; the biggie though - and were games can differ a lot - is travel. It was to slow in EQ1 whereas WoW could almost be a lobby game.
I want a more difficult game. I didn't say I want Dark Souls XXIV. I want a more difficult game than sparkle farts for logging in and getting flashed by Korean anime chicks for auto pathing to the next quest npc. Ok so I'll give an example:
Typical modern MMO quest:
Kill 10 Toxic Slimes. (wham bap, aoe kills 34 slimes, quest done, flashed by anime girl who farts sparkles while simultaneously orgasming next to me and I get 4 level ups)
Ideal difficult MMO quest:
Kill 10 Toxic Slimes. (battle ensues, monsters need to be lured and fought carefully and have a chance at dropping decent loot, have to use a mechanic to avoid being killed by the toxicity of the slimes. Go back to turn in quest, thanked for helping and given a very small reward that doesn't really affect my game progression)
The focus of the quest was meant to teach me a mechanic dealing with a difficult monster, not to skip me to the next zone's level. Now that I've learned the mechanic I'm actually better at my character and I understand how some of the components flow. It turns out those slimes have a chance at dropping rare crafting mats and a smaller chance of a really good weapon, now I can more efficiently farm them while relaxing and listening to music and simultaneously get some gradual XP towards my next level.
I didn't log in to get 13 levels today, I logged in to relax and chat with my guildies while I gather these mats, and might get something rare and useful while I'm at it. If something rare drops that I can't use I can sell it and buy extras of the mats I was looking for.
Our game style was the original MMO style. It wasn't some huge race to bask in the floating sparkles of anime orgasm-farts, it was a place to chill and work towards something relatively difficult. Yes there's the guy who spends 23.5 hours a day and has better stuff than any of us and that's ok we can deal with that. He's super man, hero boy, we diss him in the 30 minutes a day he's offline. I don't want them to rebuild the entire game so that he can't do it.
I know reading this sounds REALLY awful to some people and THAT'S OK I'M NOT DISSING YOU. There's 64,000 games catering to you already and like jack shit nothing catering to us people who want what you guys consider ' A SHITTY GAME '. Try saying this 'Make a game I don't like and I won't play it, but I'll be happy for the people who enjoy it.' It's not that complicated, there's a crowd of us, it's not the World of Warcraft, but it's enough to keep a decent size company up and running if they catered.
I never did get to "endgame" in UO, I was always playing catch up to those who spent their bathroom breaks poring over maps and charts to min/max the best way to "win", so I can't tell you whether all the endgame content was artificially locked or whether the game itself by virtue of the difficulty made grouping desirable.
(ie. world boss, dungeons where you never knew if the spawn rate could and did almost always overwhelm you, the need for other class abilities than a single player could have like needing a high level thief to open that last chest, etc.)
I do recall one where you needed six or eight? different players for one of the puzzles to open the gate to the dungeon, but most of the world used to be unlocked and if you were a Leroy Jenkins you were able to attempt pretty much anything solo, just usually unsuccessfully. Crafting was the same, you could either level up numerous alts to become mostly self sufficient(thus taking longer than say a group of friends or a guild would) because you needed components from different higher level professions, that were all restricted with hard caps as to the number of max level proficiencies a single character could have.
I know many players seem to prefer a system where they could do it all on one character(ie. FF) but some of us liked having to make those specialized alts, as tedious as it may seem, as opposed to joining some drama filled guild just to have access to the majority of the content in the game and we are willing to lag behind the "elites", we just don't want to get totally left behind or have the game dumbed down to "let" us play the game, imo.
Oh and I also disagree with multi-boxing in a mmorpg, just like I think you should only be able to login one character at a time. However, instead of coding this into the game and punishing those who try to bend the rules, devs ignore the damage this kind of game play does to the game. Whether it's because they just don't know how to deal with it or don't want to lose that customer I don't know, but I know a lot of players that will not play a game where they're expected to be able to compete with someone that is able to have a set up where they're using multiple characters all at the same time to do the same thing. The games that require both characters online at the same time to do certain things only compound the problem and imo leave a loophole for those who do multi-box to make a case for why they should be able to do so.
Sorry for the wall of text but if you made it this far, I'm basically in favour of the harder mechanics of the older mmorpgs but not in favour of forced grouping, just call me Leroy?
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
Personally I prefer the kind of challenge I get from creating / customizing something to a kind of perfection. I dont need a reward for it, the creation I make is the reward.
Gear hunting just for the sake of some stats, or taking on harder and harder bosses, I find that very tedious.
What I do like also though is to grind for mats, that raiders need, while the game still supplies items Id like to have, so I have something to spend my gold on.
Circle of life that way is great I find.
I do the things raiders find tedious, so they wont have to deal with that, and raiders should have plenty of content to do, so I dont end up without players to grind for.
We all need each other, so there has to be content for all of us in one and same game, imo anyway.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
if you are a dev do you try to raise multiple millions of dollars, throw away your personal life for 5 years before launch then 5 years afterward...for a game that will see most people quitting within a month? Or do you raise a third of the money, have a life and just make a single player game? Or some mobile game....which will make just as much money and you get to have a life?
mmorpg generation, those of us who were involved with the golden age of mmorpgs...we all grew up....and the next generation would rather play LOL+Overwatch+steam games than deal with a game that tries to do it all and make everyone happy but fails across the board.
Think of all the single player RPG;s that would have been classics but instead were made to mmorpgs...that failed and shut down and no one can ever enjoy again....mmorpgs was sort of a bad idea imo...so much wasted time and effort and so many of them no one will ever enjoy again...while a single player came could have existed forever without constant support and online servers. Just think about that.
20 years from now theres going to be a dark hole in gaming during this period from all the developers who made mmorpgs that no longer exist and no one can play.