The idea of challenge died when punitive death features, xp, gear, money loss were removed from MMORPGS. If there is no risk then there is no longer a feeling of reward or danger.
Nonsense. Decades ago, there were plenty of challenging games in which all that dying meant is that you had to restart the level. I don't mean "hardly anyone can beat this" level of challenging, but at least enough that if you weren't paying attention, you'd die.
The top endgame raids are completely irrelevant to discussion about challenge. Hardly anyone does them. What matters is the content that people actually do, and that's stupidly easy now. You could make it stupidly easy in Vanilla, too, and many (most?) people did. But at least you had a choice then. Now you don't.
I think that WoW concluded that if the content at low levels was challenging, too many new people would give up, feeling that they will never "catch up" to end game and too many current players would feel discouraged from leveling an alt due to 'the grind'. I think there are solutions to this problem. However, they seem to ignore them in favor of the lure of end game for the incoming player and speed leveling of alts for the vets.
That's an argument for making leveling fast, not for making content trivial. Long grind is not the same as challenging content. You can have challenging lower level content that you still level through quickly.
For example, see Kritika Online, which I'm playing now. With a character level in the 30s (as compared to a cap of 70), you might gain a level per 10 minutes of actively playing in danger zones. And you might also die in 3 hits, which isn't that disruptive to the leveling process, but does mean that you have to pay attention. That's a lot faster leveling than WoW has today, while being a massively greater challenge than WoW has whether today or in Vanilla.
I agree; I think there are multiple ways WoW could achieve the same ends with challenge included.
I'm not really in the market for 24/7 challenge in my games. I use games as an escape from challenge and to be entertained.
I play most of WoW, but tend to stay away from the more elite PvP/Raiding/Dungeon (Arenas/RBG's/Mythics) gameplay. I in no way wish they'd remove it from the game, and actually wish they'd expand on it more for the peeps (like some friends) who enjoy that type of gameplay.
I think Dev's are trying to mobilefy game mechanics to entice that big money.
I always thought WoW was too easy from the get go....Especially compared to the MMOs that came before it.....It was the start of the "I want to be entertained and not challenged" player.
Gee, I wonder why it was so popular then?? Makes no sense that people would want to be entertained by their games!
FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!
The top endgame raids are completely irrelevant to discussion about challenge. Hardly anyone does them. What matters is the content that people actually do, and that's stupidly easy now. You could make it stupidly easy in Vanilla, too, and many (most?) people did. But at least you had a choice then. Now you don't.
DDO does this perfectly in my opinion. A group queues up for a Dungeon and then chooses difficulty they want to face for that run. Wow I believe allows some choice with endgame dungeons, but I really enjoyed DDO's method of offering the choice.
And we all spend time dreaming up our perfect MMO. In mine, I would have hardcore servers with a more old school approach and casual servers with a more modern, forgiving ruleset. Cater to both styles.
We need to start thinking of MMO's as we do music or literature or the movies. There is not one MMO or one game that will be universally satisfactory to everyone's taste. MMO's don't come in one genre just as books or music doesn't come in one genre. Change and innovation is a good thing in the MMO industry just as it is in literature and music, but every MMO doesn't need to push the envelope or be cutting edge to be "good" or fun. It just needs to be good. The same is true for music. The same is true for books or for movies. Music evolves. MMO's evolve. Storytelling evolves. And in doing so, it doesn't make obsolete or not enjoyable everything that's been done before.
You could argue whether learning the mechanics of a raid fight, however complex, is defining challenge. Is a learning period the same as a challenge ? The learning part is, but once mastered, the "dance" as it is often referred to is not really a challenge is it. Maybe you need more than just mechanic complexity to define "challenging". Mechanic complexity can be some of it, but I don't think it can stand alone. So if you agree to that, what is needed alongside mechanic complexity ? Can it be defined as one thing or a set of things, or maybe it is the "magic" that happens through a multitude of details and changing one little thing can tilt the balance ?
One thing I think is a must have is that there has to be variety of something unexpected in the mix, so that players have to think and/or react to the unexpected, and how they do that define the outcome or further advancement of [insert anything really].
Also, I don't think we can dismiss the effect that a million tiny changes can have. QoL is good, but a thousand microscopic QoL changes has a huge effect on the entire dynamics of a game. Oldschool players will say it all wen't to shit when they removed or optimized this or that mechanics, and they are both right and not; Even re-inserting those things does not mean the entire package that includes other inventions will work as a whole, and at the same time removing them was not the entire reason it stopped working. Developers are not some kind of Oracles that can see how things will effect their game, and being on the inside unable to see the problems from the outside/player perspective, makes them blind effects even after they make them. Oups, sidestepped a bit.. but lets say these effects are messing with CHALLENGE (as a complex idea) of a game.
I do miss planning out my session before I left town. like a pre-flight before take off. Because you didn't want to run all the way back to town.
Or, I'm going here, so I better bring this specific chest piece that prevents me from insta-death from the zone/mobs/boss mechanic.
I also miss when gear mattered. Now it's just iLVL in newer games. Even colors are meaningless now. An iLvL 201 green off a trash mob is better than an iLVL 200 Purple from a raid boss. Everything can be done in endgame without having to have min/max or "BiS".
It's more than about "durr, it's only hard because it was tedious". It was about putting thought into what you were doing. Writing things down on a pad of paper, etc.
Comments
I play most of WoW, but tend to stay away from the more elite PvP/Raiding/Dungeon (Arenas/RBG's/Mythics) gameplay. I in no way wish they'd remove it from the game, and actually wish they'd expand on it more for the peeps (like some friends) who enjoy that type of gameplay.
I think Dev's are trying to mobilefy game mechanics to entice that big money.
Gut Out!
What, me worry?
FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!
And we all spend time dreaming up our perfect MMO. In mine, I would have hardcore servers with a more old school approach and casual servers with a more modern, forgiving ruleset. Cater to both styles.
Maybe you need more than just mechanic complexity to define "challenging". Mechanic complexity can be some of it, but I don't think it can stand alone.
So if you agree to that, what is needed alongside mechanic complexity ? Can it be defined as one thing or a set of things, or maybe it is the "magic" that happens through a multitude of details and changing one little thing can tilt the balance ?
One thing I think is a must have is that there has to be variety of something unexpected in the mix, so that players have to think and/or react to the unexpected, and how they do that define the outcome or further advancement of [insert anything really].
Also, I don't think we can dismiss the effect that a million tiny changes can have. QoL is good, but a thousand microscopic QoL changes has a huge effect on the entire dynamics of a game. Oldschool players will say it all wen't to shit when they removed or optimized this or that mechanics, and they are both right and not; Even re-inserting those things does not mean the entire package that includes other inventions will work as a whole, and at the same time removing them was not the entire reason it stopped working. Developers are not some kind of Oracles that can see how things will effect their game, and being on the inside unable to see the problems from the outside/player perspective, makes them blind effects even after they make them. Oups, sidestepped a bit.. but lets say these effects are messing with CHALLENGE (as a complex idea) of a game.
"I am my connectome" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HA7GwKXfJB0
Or, I'm going here, so I better bring this specific chest piece that prevents me from insta-death from the zone/mobs/boss mechanic.
I also miss when gear mattered. Now it's just iLVL in newer games. Even colors are meaningless now. An iLvL 201 green off a trash mob is better than an iLVL 200 Purple from a raid boss. Everything can be done in endgame without having to have min/max or "BiS".
It's more than about "durr, it's only hard because it was tedious". It was about putting thought into what you were doing. Writing things down on a pad of paper, etc.