In WoW's case, it's been out for 8 years, so it's getting harder and harder to keep people wanting more of the same. You could make an argument for Vanilla and BC difficulty being better for the game, but I don't know how well they'd do overall if they kept up with the extremely hardcore raid progression--as in, to gear up for the latest raid, you HAVE to have everyone fully equipped with the previous raid's gear.
Regardless, the instant gratification seems to help WoW retain members. I think other developers decided to focus on that as a design choice, and it might not have been the best decision on their part. WoW does what it does to keep players, but that didn't necessarily mean other games had to follow in suit.
When you can reach level cap within a few weeks to a month, you are slightly less attached to the character. In WoW, it works, because everyone's already so invested with other characters. In a new game, it's hard to tear people away from their attachments when it takes everyone and their mother relatively the same short amount of time to get to the same point.
So a lot of people are blaming WoW for causing this need for instant gratification, but it does what it does to keep relevant in this age of a new major MMO releasing every few months. It's also partly the fault of new developers for focusing on instant gratification as necessary to their game design. They could have and, in a lot of cases, should have had players build themselves up slowly, so that they valued their investment in the new title more.
Originally posted by rungard players wanted accessibility..developers intrpreted it as they want easy.
Actually--players cried for soloability, from virtually EQ's opening day.
The whole industry, seeing the cash, shifted over the course of perhaps five years. Sure enough, it was good for lots and lots of dollars.
But soloability means the content has to be tuned for the weakest classes. After all, if all classes are not equally solo-able, the goal breaks down. Particularly problematic in WoW, where leveling content was tuned for the low DPS/cloth armor of pure healers.
Blizzard's PvP game demanded the healers could never do more than low dps. So rock and a hard place; a leveling game balanced around Holy Priests is not challenging (at all) to any of the Plate or DPS classes. A class with plate survivability AND doing high DPS? Auto-attacks all the way to the cap. Wake me up next Thursday, when I arrive there again.
Did we 'ask' for it? No, not really.
Did we 'ask' for some goals that were mutually opposed to other goals we also ask for? Yep. That one we do, all the bloody time.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Oh but this question is impossible to answer meaningful. First, too many people have a misconception what "easy" and "difficult" mean. And I am not talking about different levels of personal skill, no, but semantics.
Some define difficult by the harshness of penality. That is in fact a widespread misconception, because the harshness of the penality measures not the difficulty of the task itself. Or if you mirror the idea, to gratification instead of penality, the degree of gratification also has nothing to do with the difficulty of a task. A task may be very difficult but still not lead to any satisfying reward and vice versa. No, these points of view, gratification and penality lead us nowhere in the discussion about difficulty.
Second, if we, for the sake of argument, agree to the idea of penality, I have so far not found any other way to penalize a player than with time. Any penality is in the end nothing but a variance of what I would call "stolen time": effort you put into a character or achievement is nullified and you have put more time into it, regaining it. Like experience points, or repair money. Time is the only penality that a MMO can put on a player.
As to the difficulty of the task itself, it goes even more complicated. What one feels is difficult, the other finds entirely easy. Some have a hard time to jump at a certain point, other find timed reactions difficult, and someone else might find combos difficult, and while all these things are certainly found easy but others.
An RPG by definition is never based on the skills of the player, but on the skills of the character, otherwise it is no longer an RPG, but an action game. And that too is an important barrier, because if in a MMO characters are all equal by player skill, it gives a certain fair and equal starting ground, unlike when a MMOFPS is mostly based on player skill, it creates a huge gap in how succesful and thus how pleasant a game experience will be, for it can certainly be highly frustrating if a large amount of player constantly loses, don't you think? So why would any company make such a MMO, I wonder?
And in this predicament, I just so far see no meaningful approach to even discuss the question, when we could not reasonable agree on the basic idea. Only if I derail a bit from the strict terms of "difficult" and "easy" and interpret them in a broader sense, I could make some statements. Like hours and days of boss camping in the old days as a "difficulty" or no ingame radar and map, or only group quests. Those would lead to a difficulty in the sense that the game itself would be difficult to play. But is that desirable, because it always means a lot of so called "downtime", when you actually do nothing but wait, either for a group or for a spawn or for your mana to restore.
That is all I can feel I can safely say about this topic.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Originally posted by rungard players wanted accessibility..developers intrpreted it as they want easy.
Actually--players cried for soloability, from virtually EQ's opening day.
The whole industry, seeing the cash, shifted over the course of perhaps five years. Sure enough, it was good for lots and lots of dollars.
But soloability means the content has to be tuned for the weakest classes. After all, if all classes are not equally solo-able, the goal breaks down. Particularly problematic in WoW, where leveling content was tuned for the low DPS/cloth armor of pure healers.
Blizzard's PvP game demanded the healers could never do more than low dps. So rock and a hard place; a leveling game balanced around Holy Priests is not challenging (at all) to any of the Plate or DPS classes. A class with plate survivability AND doing high DPS? Auto-attacks all the way to the cap. Wake me up next Thursday, when I arrive there again.
Did we 'ask' for it? No, not really.
Did we 'ask' for some goals that were mutually opposed to other goals we also ask for? Yep. That one we do, all the bloody time.
This is indeed a huge predicament. I have not been around since EQ1 and but surely since EQ2, and I vividly recally how many from day one of EQ2 always very loudly critizised that too many quests and tasks demanded a group, and as you say, if you make a MMO solo friendly, a lot of the difficulty goes naturally out of the window.
But then, in the early days EQ2, when a lot of content was needing a group, I spent a considerably time doing nothing but waiting and seeking a group. And that was not difficult but simply boring. I see at the moment no escape from this particular dilemma.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Early on, Final Fantasy XI made it extremely difficult to solo outside of a single class, the Beastmaster, and you lost experience upon dying with the chance of losing levels as well.
The result was everyone needing to party to level efficiently. It was not unheard of to log in to look for a group for 2 hours and not actually find one, unless you were a tank or a healer. It was one of the main topics of criticism for why people did not like the game.
I think that many players say they want challenging and difficult, but they really only want it for a little while and only when it fancies them. Everyone says they wish things were harder, but they don't actually go out of their way to pursue challenges. Challenges must be brought to their feet and only when they are in the mood for it. Otherwise, they consider the game too hardcore, a grind, and not worth their time.
I think that many players say they want challenging and difficult, but they really only want it for a little while and only when it fancies them. Everyone says they wish things were harder, but they don't actually go out of their way to pursue challenges. Challenges must be brought to their feet and only when they are in the mood for it. Otherwise, they consider the game too hardcore, a grind, and not worth their time.
Blizzard made WoW easy. Let me ask you. Do you think mmo players really asked for it ?
My guess !!!.....Blizzard and other Developers are acting on their own on this subject TO PUSH EXPANTIONS. I don't think kids are complaining at all.....It's just a marketing trick.
We have no hart-pumping content at all in mmo's any more. Some would call this " Old School " but hard content has nothing to do with outdated content. We just have easy and I really don't think anyone is asking for it.
Why does hard = old school. Who even named it that ?.......What does exploring then finding a Keep, cave, or hole in the ground, with extreamly hard content inside have to do with old school. Remember when stuff like this was not even advertised. You just found it on your own. Players would find it and using word-of-mouth, places like this would become a hot spot. Now it's a major feature.
I guess you have to be 50 and up to enjoy a hard, community driven mmo with a lot of un-advertised, un-knownes. I like an mmo that you better have a large friends list or a good strong guild if your even to think about leaving a popular quest hub. But then I'm 49 years old.
It's my opinion but Blizzards Titin project, and SOE's EQ Next is gonna be crap right out of the gate !....Easy, auto-feature, solo crap. Just another 30 day video game with others on the screen.
No one asked for easy; Internet access became cheap and the intellectually challenged/ Unemployed came on board and so a new con was required wghich is called F2P. Along with this the lazy types needed someothing to fit their status and that has to be easy.
And sadly the Developers other than a few are playing along because a clone is easier to make than a real game with gameplay.
Old School did not contain all the Auto Features, which caused community to form and people to work together. The key auto features tha have killed the genre are: Auction Houses/Guilds/Insta Travel/ Auto Mail.
The last real fun I had has been in EvE and Asherons Call 1, just running over an hill was an adventure in itself. High and low level mobs interspersed everywhere. So you had to scout and run before you got your XP.
You just don't see this anymore...... sad but true
________________________________________________________ Sorcery must persist, the future is the Citadel
I'm sorry, but I like being able to see end game content. I hated having to say, "I want to see this, but my schedule no longer allows me to consistently raid in a hardcore raiding guild on a daily basis for several hours to progress."
That's the journey that people are missing.
It certainly makes the 2% feel more accomplished--and I am well aware of the superior feeling you get when you hang around town in Tier armor that many people could never even dream of touching--, but, in my opinion, it simply isn't sustainable. I don't think the majority would want to stick around with so many other MMOs being released if they didn't have a chance of seeing or doing any end game content due to the dedication involved, especially after 2-3 years.
Originally posted by rungard players wanted accessibility..developers intrpreted it as they want easy.
Actually--players cried for soloability, from virtually EQ's opening day.
The whole industry, seeing the cash, shifted over the course of perhaps five years. Sure enough, it was good for lots and lots of dollars.
But soloability means the content has to be tuned for the weakest classes. After all, if all classes are not equally solo-able, the goal breaks down. Particularly problematic in WoW, where leveling content was tuned for the low DPS/cloth armor of pure healers.
Blizzard's PvP game demanded the healers could never do more than low dps. So rock and a hard place; a leveling game balanced around Holy Priests is not challenging (at all) to any of the Plate or DPS classes. A class with plate survivability AND doing high DPS? Auto-attacks all the way to the cap. Wake me up next Thursday, when I arrive there again.
Did we 'ask' for it? No, not really.
Did we 'ask' for some goals that were mutually opposed to other goals we also ask for? Yep. That one we do, all the bloody time.
which was ironic considering that pretty much every class in eq could solo well into the kunark expansion. Well every class but the warrior and rangerr. Druid/necro/mage/enchanter/bard/shaman/cleric/wizard/shadowknight/......paladin.......warrior/ranger.i cant remember if the monk could solo or not.
I'm sorry, but I like being able to see end game content. I hated having to say, "I want to see this, but my schedule no longer allows me to consistently raid in a hardcore raiding guild on a daily basis for several hours to progress."
That's the journey that people are missing.
It certainly makes the 2% feel more accomplished--and I am well aware of the superior feeling you get when you hang around town in Tier armor that many people could never even dream of touching--, but, in my opinion, it simply isn't sustainable. I don't think the majority would want to stick around with so many other MMOs being released if they didn't have a chance of seeing or doing any end game content due to the dedication involved, especially after 2-3 years.
they have to move away from phat l33t. Its played out.
all want hard but when they dont manage to finish it they start QQ and try the game glitches
admit it, you want to finish a raid / instance with 3rd attempt at best
When pursuing the server first on LK we wiped maybe a dozen times. Then we went after the hardmode version, because we weren't tired of wiping just yet...
Raiders have some weird motivations, and you certainly can't lump them all together. Even PuGs...would often spend a few hours crashing against HMPutricide. Then they'd come try again next week. Other groups wouldn't ever make it past the Loot Boat.
Where is "hard" in this sequence?
One boss beyond the highest you and your group has reached, right? Or the mythical "I remember when" Vanilla boss? Something from a previous game, how much better you were than these noobs you get today? PVE isn't hard at all, pose flex (from the guy who can't avoid standing in fire)? Ask a thousand players, get a thousand answers?
Regardless of where you set the "hard" bar this week, you need to sneer at players having a rough time anywhere in the sequence lower than you. Egoboo requires that you have someone else to look down upon.
Remember, each new expansion offers millions of oppotunities to sneer at fresh batches of clueless nubs. Get it in before your Trophies from last expansion become dated...
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Originally posted by Torvaldr People have been complaining about hard since day 1, year 0. It didn't happen because some mythical new weaker mmo gamer demographic moved in.
Just because people complain doesn't mean something should change. Even if they complain and it does change doesn't mean it is better.
Originally posted by Torvaldr People have been complaining about hard since day 1, year 0. It didn't happen because some mythical new weaker mmo gamer demographic moved in.
Who are thease people you are talking about ?.....Are you sure they are really asking for easy or are develpers doing this on there own.
1) easy = buy more expantions
2) less content needed
I had never found anyone in game or on here that are crying for easy.
World of Warcraft now is....Do two quest and up a level, sometimes you even level up on your way to turn in a both quest. Sure it gets longer but not by much !
I'm sorry, but I like being able to see end game content. I hated having to say, "I want to see this, but my schedule no longer allows me to consistently raid in a hardcore raiding guild on a daily basis for several hours to progress."
That's the journey that people are missing.
It certainly makes the 2% feel more accomplished--and I am well aware of the superior feeling you get when you hang around town in Tier armor that many people could never even dream of touching--, but, in my opinion, it simply isn't sustainable. I don't think the majority would want to stick around with so many other MMOs being released if they didn't have a chance of seeing or doing any end game content due to the dedication involved, especially after 2-3 years.
You are not getting it, sorry to be so blunt. End-game raid bosses were used as a very obvious example, but people here are talking about the overall difficulty. When you need two weeks of casual play to get to level cap and you have hardly died a couple of times during the whole process it's no wonder people get bored so quickly and jump from game to game every 2 months. How long did you last on your first MMO? How long did you last on your last one? Why did you leave? See what I mean?
I don't care about the end-game content beeing more or less exclusive. I don't care if there are no raids at all, it wouldn't be the first game I enjoy that has no raiding at end-game. I care about getting challenged during the whole leveling process, not just following arrows and facerolling everything on my way with 2 skills, and this affects everybody, not only the 2% you mention.
I'm sorry, but I like being able to see end game content. I hated having to say, "I want to see this, but my schedule no longer allows me to consistently raid in a hardcore raiding guild on a daily basis for several hours to progress."
That's the journey that people are missing.
It certainly makes the 2% feel more accomplished--and I am well aware of the superior feeling you get when you hang around town in Tier armor that many people could never even dream of touching--, but, in my opinion, it simply isn't sustainable. I don't think the majority would want to stick around with so many other MMOs being released if they didn't have a chance of seeing or doing any end game content due to the dedication involved, especially after 2-3 years.
You are not getting it, sorry to be so blunt. End-game raid bosses were used as a very obvious example, but people here are talking about the overall difficulty. When you need two weeks of casual play to get to level cap and you have hardly died a couple of times during the whole process it's no wonder people get bored so quickly and jump from game to game every 2 months. How long did you last on your first MMO? How long did you last on your last one? Why did you leave? See what I mean?
I don't care about the end-game content beeing more or less exclusive. I don't care if there are no raids at all, it wouldn't be the first game I enjoy that has no raiding at end-game. I care about getting challenged during the whole leveling process, not just following arrows and facerolling everything on my way with 2 skills, and this affects everybody, not only the 2% you mention.
Actually, I was responding to the video that was linked that mostly talked about raids.
I will be blunt as well. MMOs that are difficult overall do not sell as well. There is a market for players who like difficult games, but when you are spending millions developing an MMO, you want to appeal to more than just a niche interest group.
Diablo 3 Inferno was originally incredibly difficult, and that didn't go over so well with players. Demon Souls and Dark Souls were marketed towards players who liked challenges, and they did well enough. But do you really think a big name MMO could pull that off? Smaller MMOs, sure. AAA MMOs simply cost too much to develop and maintain to cater to a small demographic.
What they can do is offer challenging content that is optional, but it seems like optional is not a word that is received well here. So you want a game that challenges you and is just as difficult for millions of players as well? Let me also point out that "challenging" is very subjective.
At what end of the wide spectrum of player skill would you like to balance the challenges around? If you place it in the middle, the more skilled end will find it too easy. If you put it at the top end, you will alienate a lot of your playerbase.
These games are made to make money. You want challenging content all throughout, but you aren't even completing the optional challenges. Developers aren't just going to take your word for it that you want harder. They take statistics into account, and you aren't interested enough to give them that to work with.
Also, I like challenges as well, but I actually take on the optional challenges when I can. I don't expect any MMOs to cater to my level of challenge, because it's simply not feasible. We had overall challenging in the past. They didn't sell as well. There wasn't enough interest overall.
I think people say they want easy but don't end up staying when the content is too difficult. If a game came out like EQ with persistent death but with all new content but the same difficulty level, I think everyone ( or most everyone) would complain about it. I don't think people like it hard but I don't think they like it easy either. They want to be rewarded for acheiving something but the vast majority will only work so hard for that prize. If there had been a middle of the road button, I would have probably had to take that if I was honest with myself.
Actually, I was responding to the video that was linked that mostly talked about raids.
I will be blunt as well. MMOs that are difficult overall do not sell as well. There is a market for players who like difficult games, but when you are spending millions developing an MMO, you want to appeal to more than just a niche interest group.
Diablo 3 Inferno was originally incredibly difficult, and that didn't go over so well with players. Demon Souls and Dark Souls were marketed towards players who liked challenges, and they did well enough. But do you really think a big name MMO could pull that off? Smaller MMOs, sure. AAA MMOs simply cost too much to develop and maintain to cater to a small demographic.
What they can do is offer challenging content that is optional, but it seems like optional is not a word that is received well here. So you want a game that challenges you and is just as difficult for millions of players as well? Let me also point out that "challenging" is very subjective.
At what end of the wide spectrum of player skill would you like to balance the challenges around? If you place it in the middle, the more skilled end will find it too easy. If you put it at the top end, you will alienate a lot of your playerbase.
These games are made to make money. You want challenging content all throughout, but you aren't even completing the optional challenges. Developers aren't just going to take your word for it that you want harder. They take statistics into account, and you aren't interested enough to give them that to work with.
Also, I like challenges as well, but I actually take on the optional challenges when I can. I don't expect any MMOs to cater to my level of challenge, because it's simply not feasible. We had overall challenging in the past. They didn't sell as well. There wasn't enough interest overall.
Unfortunately, the optional challenge that you are talking about is only available at end game. While I am leveling I have to artificially create that challenge for me by doing quests that are way above my level, pulling several groups at the same time and soloing things I am not supposed to solo.
So your argument about "offering optional challenging content", while valid for end-game, it does not apply to the rest of the game. There is no option. There is only an "easy-as-1-2-3-streamlined-chain-of-quests-hubs-with-arrows-pointing-directions".
I am well aware of this beeing a marketing strategy to make the game "accessible" to everybody, including the clumsiest player ever to win the clumsy national championship on clumsyland, but this does not necessarily mean that I am going to like it. Or, if you like analogies, I know Justin Bieber is selling records like bananas, but the last album I got was from Angelus Apatrida. At least I have options when it comes to challenge in music, but I don't seem to have these same options when it comes to MMOs, unless it's an underdeveloped buggy indie game which I am not interested in playing either.
This is probably why I am not playing any MMO at the moment.
Originally posted by rungard players wanted accessibility..developers intrpreted it as they want easy.
Actually--players cried for soloability, from virtually EQ's opening day.
Not for me and not for almost every player I talked to in that game. I was too busy enjoying the teaming with other players to do content, akin to an AD&D tabletop adventure, while thinking this is awesome, it's so much more different to the single player RPG's I have!
I didn't want another single player RPG, the MMO was a different beast in that it brought multiplayer into a new idea - before then multiplayer was fighting other players, this was working with other players toward a set goal, dealing with tough creatures and fighting across planes.
Now, MMO's have shifted the other way to where they're nothing more than a single player RPG with some multiplayer co-op, while dumbing down all the content so the lowest common denominator can get his or her shiny shiny and think they're awesome. Pathetic. I wish so hard for a return to the original design.
Comments
In WoW's case, it's been out for 8 years, so it's getting harder and harder to keep people wanting more of the same. You could make an argument for Vanilla and BC difficulty being better for the game, but I don't know how well they'd do overall if they kept up with the extremely hardcore raid progression--as in, to gear up for the latest raid, you HAVE to have everyone fully equipped with the previous raid's gear.
Regardless, the instant gratification seems to help WoW retain members. I think other developers decided to focus on that as a design choice, and it might not have been the best decision on their part. WoW does what it does to keep players, but that didn't necessarily mean other games had to follow in suit.
When you can reach level cap within a few weeks to a month, you are slightly less attached to the character. In WoW, it works, because everyone's already so invested with other characters. In a new game, it's hard to tear people away from their attachments when it takes everyone and their mother relatively the same short amount of time to get to the same point.
So a lot of people are blaming WoW for causing this need for instant gratification, but it does what it does to keep relevant in this age of a new major MMO releasing every few months. It's also partly the fault of new developers for focusing on instant gratification as necessary to their game design. They could have and, in a lot of cases, should have had players build themselves up slowly, so that they valued their investment in the new title more.
Actually--players cried for soloability, from virtually EQ's opening day.
The whole industry, seeing the cash, shifted over the course of perhaps five years. Sure enough, it was good for lots and lots of dollars.
But soloability means the content has to be tuned for the weakest classes. After all, if all classes are not equally solo-able, the goal breaks down. Particularly problematic in WoW, where leveling content was tuned for the low DPS/cloth armor of pure healers.
Blizzard's PvP game demanded the healers could never do more than low dps. So rock and a hard place; a leveling game balanced around Holy Priests is not challenging (at all) to any of the Plate or DPS classes. A class with plate survivability AND doing high DPS? Auto-attacks all the way to the cap. Wake me up next Thursday, when I arrive there again.
Did we 'ask' for it? No, not really.
Did we 'ask' for some goals that were mutually opposed to other goals we also ask for? Yep. That one we do, all the bloody time.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Oh but this question is impossible to answer meaningful. First, too many people have a misconception what "easy" and "difficult" mean. And I am not talking about different levels of personal skill, no, but semantics.
Some define difficult by the harshness of penality. That is in fact a widespread misconception, because the harshness of the penality measures not the difficulty of the task itself. Or if you mirror the idea, to gratification instead of penality, the degree of gratification also has nothing to do with the difficulty of a task. A task may be very difficult but still not lead to any satisfying reward and vice versa. No, these points of view, gratification and penality lead us nowhere in the discussion about difficulty.
Second, if we, for the sake of argument, agree to the idea of penality, I have so far not found any other way to penalize a player than with time. Any penality is in the end nothing but a variance of what I would call "stolen time": effort you put into a character or achievement is nullified and you have put more time into it, regaining it. Like experience points, or repair money. Time is the only penality that a MMO can put on a player.
As to the difficulty of the task itself, it goes even more complicated. What one feels is difficult, the other finds entirely easy. Some have a hard time to jump at a certain point, other find timed reactions difficult, and someone else might find combos difficult, and while all these things are certainly found easy but others.
An RPG by definition is never based on the skills of the player, but on the skills of the character, otherwise it is no longer an RPG, but an action game. And that too is an important barrier, because if in a MMO characters are all equal by player skill, it gives a certain fair and equal starting ground, unlike when a MMOFPS is mostly based on player skill, it creates a huge gap in how succesful and thus how pleasant a game experience will be, for it can certainly be highly frustrating if a large amount of player constantly loses, don't you think? So why would any company make such a MMO, I wonder?
And in this predicament, I just so far see no meaningful approach to even discuss the question, when we could not reasonable agree on the basic idea. Only if I derail a bit from the strict terms of "difficult" and "easy" and interpret them in a broader sense, I could make some statements. Like hours and days of boss camping in the old days as a "difficulty" or no ingame radar and map, or only group quests. Those would lead to a difficulty in the sense that the game itself would be difficult to play. But is that desirable, because it always means a lot of so called "downtime", when you actually do nothing but wait, either for a group or for a spawn or for your mana to restore.
That is all I can feel I can safely say about this topic.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
This is indeed a huge predicament. I have not been around since EQ1 and but surely since EQ2, and I vividly recally how many from day one of EQ2 always very loudly critizised that too many quests and tasks demanded a group, and as you say, if you make a MMO solo friendly, a lot of the difficulty goes naturally out of the window.
But then, in the early days EQ2, when a lot of content was needing a group, I spent a considerably time doing nothing but waiting and seeking a group. And that was not difficult but simply boring. I see at the moment no escape from this particular dilemma.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Early on, Final Fantasy XI made it extremely difficult to solo outside of a single class, the Beastmaster, and you lost experience upon dying with the chance of losing levels as well.
The result was everyone needing to party to level efficiently. It was not unheard of to log in to look for a group for 2 hours and not actually find one, unless you were a tank or a healer. It was one of the main topics of criticism for why people did not like the game.
I think that many players say they want challenging and difficult, but they really only want it for a little while and only when it fancies them. Everyone says they wish things were harder, but they don't actually go out of their way to pursue challenges. Challenges must be brought to their feet and only when they are in the mood for it. Otherwise, they consider the game too hardcore, a grind, and not worth their time.
Sounds pretty accurate to me.
all want hard but when they dont manage to finish it they start QQ and try the game glitches
admit it, you want to finish a raid / instance with 3rd attempt at best
These threads should be a drinking game - there's a laundry list of cliches that come up every time.
Got a list?
No one asked for easy; Internet access became cheap and the intellectually challenged/ Unemployed came on board and so a new con was required wghich is called F2P. Along with this the lazy types needed someothing to fit their status and that has to be easy.
And sadly the Developers other than a few are playing along because a clone is easier to make than a real game with gameplay.
Old School did not contain all the Auto Features, which caused community to form and people to work together. The key auto features tha have killed the genre are: Auction Houses/Guilds/Insta Travel/ Auto Mail.
The last real fun I had has been in EvE and Asherons Call 1, just running over an hill was an adventure in itself. High and low level mobs interspersed everywhere. So you had to scout and run before you got your XP.
You just don't see this anymore...... sad but true
________________________________________________________
Sorcery must persist, the future is the Citadel
I prefer a challenge.
This guy sums up my thoughts on WoW and it's shift to ez-mode
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rd0-zVIBVo&list=FLsaY4qwkmX7DJ_Mc-04yyOw&index=2&feature=plpp_video
I'm sorry, but I like being able to see end game content. I hated having to say, "I want to see this, but my schedule no longer allows me to consistently raid in a hardcore raiding guild on a daily basis for several hours to progress."
That's the journey that people are missing.
It certainly makes the 2% feel more accomplished--and I am well aware of the superior feeling you get when you hang around town in Tier armor that many people could never even dream of touching--, but, in my opinion, it simply isn't sustainable. I don't think the majority would want to stick around with so many other MMOs being released if they didn't have a chance of seeing or doing any end game content due to the dedication involved, especially after 2-3 years.
which was ironic considering that pretty much every class in eq could solo well into the kunark expansion. Well every class but the warrior and rangerr. Druid/necro/mage/enchanter/bard/shaman/cleric/wizard/shadowknight/......paladin.......warrior/ranger.i cant remember if the monk could solo or not.
they have to move away from phat l33t. Its played out.
When pursuing the server first on LK we wiped maybe a dozen times. Then we went after the hardmode version, because we weren't tired of wiping just yet...
Raiders have some weird motivations, and you certainly can't lump them all together. Even PuGs...would often spend a few hours crashing against HMPutricide. Then they'd come try again next week. Other groups wouldn't ever make it past the Loot Boat.
Where is "hard" in this sequence?
One boss beyond the highest you and your group has reached, right? Or the mythical "I remember when" Vanilla boss? Something from a previous game, how much better you were than these noobs you get today? PVE isn't hard at all, pose flex (from the guy who can't avoid standing in fire)? Ask a thousand players, get a thousand answers?
Regardless of where you set the "hard" bar this week, you need to sneer at players having a rough time anywhere in the sequence lower than you. Egoboo requires that you have someone else to look down upon.
Remember, each new expansion offers millions of oppotunities to sneer at fresh batches of clueless nubs. Get it in before your Trophies from last expansion become dated...
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Just because people complain doesn't mean something should change. Even if they complain and it does change doesn't mean it is better.
Who are thease people you are talking about ?.....Are you sure they are really asking for easy or are develpers doing this on there own.
1) easy = buy more expantions
2) less content needed
I had never found anyone in game or on here that are crying for easy.
World of Warcraft now is....Do two quest and up a level, sometimes you even level up on your way to turn in a both quest. Sure it gets longer but not by much !
You are not getting it, sorry to be so blunt. End-game raid bosses were used as a very obvious example, but people here are talking about the overall difficulty. When you need two weeks of casual play to get to level cap and you have hardly died a couple of times during the whole process it's no wonder people get bored so quickly and jump from game to game every 2 months. How long did you last on your first MMO? How long did you last on your last one? Why did you leave? See what I mean?
I don't care about the end-game content beeing more or less exclusive. I don't care if there are no raids at all, it wouldn't be the first game I enjoy that has no raiding at end-game. I care about getting challenged during the whole leveling process, not just following arrows and facerolling everything on my way with 2 skills, and this affects everybody, not only the 2% you mention.
Thank you
Actually, I was responding to the video that was linked that mostly talked about raids.
I will be blunt as well. MMOs that are difficult overall do not sell as well. There is a market for players who like difficult games, but when you are spending millions developing an MMO, you want to appeal to more than just a niche interest group.
Diablo 3 Inferno was originally incredibly difficult, and that didn't go over so well with players. Demon Souls and Dark Souls were marketed towards players who liked challenges, and they did well enough. But do you really think a big name MMO could pull that off? Smaller MMOs, sure. AAA MMOs simply cost too much to develop and maintain to cater to a small demographic.
What they can do is offer challenging content that is optional, but it seems like optional is not a word that is received well here. So you want a game that challenges you and is just as difficult for millions of players as well? Let me also point out that "challenging" is very subjective.
At what end of the wide spectrum of player skill would you like to balance the challenges around? If you place it in the middle, the more skilled end will find it too easy. If you put it at the top end, you will alienate a lot of your playerbase.
These games are made to make money. You want challenging content all throughout, but you aren't even completing the optional challenges. Developers aren't just going to take your word for it that you want harder. They take statistics into account, and you aren't interested enough to give them that to work with.
Also, I like challenges as well, but I actually take on the optional challenges when I can. I don't expect any MMOs to cater to my level of challenge, because it's simply not feasible. We had overall challenging in the past. They didn't sell as well. There wasn't enough interest overall.
Unfortunately, the optional challenge that you are talking about is only available at end game. While I am leveling I have to artificially create that challenge for me by doing quests that are way above my level, pulling several groups at the same time and soloing things I am not supposed to solo.
So your argument about "offering optional challenging content", while valid for end-game, it does not apply to the rest of the game. There is no option. There is only an "easy-as-1-2-3-streamlined-chain-of-quests-hubs-with-arrows-pointing-directions".
I am well aware of this beeing a marketing strategy to make the game "accessible" to everybody, including the clumsiest player ever to win the clumsy national championship on clumsyland, but this does not necessarily mean that I am going to like it. Or, if you like analogies, I know Justin Bieber is selling records like bananas, but the last album I got was from Angelus Apatrida. At least I have options when it comes to challenge in music, but I don't seem to have these same options when it comes to MMOs, unless it's an underdeveloped buggy indie game which I am not interested in playing either.
This is probably why I am not playing any MMO at the moment.
Not for me and not for almost every player I talked to in that game. I was too busy enjoying the teaming with other players to do content, akin to an AD&D tabletop adventure, while thinking this is awesome, it's so much more different to the single player RPG's I have!
I didn't want another single player RPG, the MMO was a different beast in that it brought multiplayer into a new idea - before then multiplayer was fighting other players, this was working with other players toward a set goal, dealing with tough creatures and fighting across planes.
Now, MMO's have shifted the other way to where they're nothing more than a single player RPG with some multiplayer co-op, while dumbing down all the content so the lowest common denominator can get his or her shiny shiny and think they're awesome. Pathetic. I wish so hard for a return to the original design.