Reporter: What's behind Blizzard success, and how do you make your gamers happy? Blizzard Boss: Making gamers happy is not my concern, making money.. yes!
Originally posted by Xarko Not necessarily easy, but they became SIMPLE.
I dont see the difference
Chess is a *simple* game. Does that make it an *easy* game?
Chess isnt a simple game, you have so many different moves u can do, it pieces does somthign different and so on. In MMO of today u press 1 button and repeat and u win.
A brief explanation (as I'm at work): There's no "checkpoints" anymore, because player skill isn't a factor. When I say checkpoints, I mean a point in the game where your ability as an individual/group need to be tested. That does NOTmean what every modern MMO acts like it means: a blatant gut-check on your gear. Gear, in fact, should have nearly nothing to do with it. Rather, it should be a tooth-and-nail fight that requires a lot of skill, and a little luck. You should be able to lose to more than "Whoops, I pulled 3 mobs instead of 2!"
The only game that had anything like this in recent memory was FFXI. The Genkai quests were brutal, but in order to keep leveling, you had to complete them; 4 times! Then, if you wanted to keep leveling to the level cap, you had to defeat Maat; a vicious, 1 v 1 mirror match of your class vs. a substantially stronger foe. It was mind-numbing, but when you did FINALLY beat Maat, it was like "That... was amazing." It ensured you understood your class and it's limitations to the fullest.
More importantly, pain-staking difficulty builds community. When you create prbolems that people can't solve by themselves, guess what they do? They interact. You can see this even in the most casual MMO's out there. "Hey, I need to kill this boss... help me out?" "Sure." You see it happen all the time. The problem is, once said boss is dead, there's absolutely no reason to continue grouping, so people don't. That relative ease for the 98% of the game conditions the solo mentality, whereas if it was 98% challenging content, group play would be more beneficial.
I wish every developer would read this quoted post, then games wouldn't be so damn boring.
FFXI was brilliant. At that time MMO's were supposed to be the next big thing, so much more potential for the genre. I am literally stunned at what MMO's have become.
Yes too easy and too simple. The makers have to realize even the hardcore casuals wanting things handed to them on a silver platter get bored of it. They cry for wanting all the stuff others who put effort into it want but at the same time they will likely get bored and move on much quicker, not having any sense of accomplishment in the task.
Simplifying the game has the same effect. It just dumbs down the thought behind it and really makes it hard to invest time into a game. Look at WoW, the butchering of the talent system has actually demeaned the aspect of leveling to somehow be even more boring then it use to be giving no sense of accomplishment, all while having a feeling of lack of choice which makes the experience that much weaker. Sure, often choice existed as pre-established builds for some, but it made it feel like you were doing something.
So long as games are made "Easy and Simple" people will just be that much quicker to get bored and move on. Why invest in a game if you clear through it almost instantly?
Excellent write up and something many of us have been saying for years.. I miss the complexity and fun EQ (pre PoP) gave to me.. Death was around every corner if you didn't pay attention, and even if you did, you could still get pwn'd.. I remember running through Maiden's Eye on my way to Umbral Plains and having those SK's at the zone in tunnel own me with their harm touch.. Getting to max level was not something you did in a week, and for those of us that do remember back in the day.. Hell levels were truly an achievement in their own right.. 59th was the worst.. Ha Ha Ha.. Farming and gaining gear as you leveled was welcomed and appreciated.... We didn't buzz through content so fast that gear upgrades only lasted one day.. I currently haven't touched a MMO since my first couple months of SWToR.. I'm done with this current genre of gaming.. I want my old MMO's back.. lol
I completely agree, where MMO has become a sit back and watch this show mode. It doesn't even feel like game. I played GW2 for a week and quit. Couldn't take the casual approach any more.
That why I switched to Dark Fall Unholy Wars. It is a carebear nightmare. Full loot, open world pvp. You farm 3 days to raid for 1 days. You loose your gear either through dura (no repair) or someone takes it from you.
Yes MMO are now in easy mode but we have few exceptions. One of them is Dark Fall. Other one is EVE and MO.
Now Playing: DARKFALL Unholy Wars "Return to Open World, Full Loot PvP, Conquest in a Sandbox MMO with player driven economy! Just like classic MMOs!"
WoW is a casual game and always has been. The fact that it has become even more casual is unfortunate for people who like needless complication, but not unprecedented. Games should never be work, the more seemingly sophisticated a game becomes the more it becomes work and it is therefore no longer a game. You and many others insist on turning a casual cool down into a horribly constipated wait, bake, and fake fest. Easy bake ovens are easy because the experience of getting a brownie in a relatively short amount of time makes you feel like you could do anything well and motivates you to do more, however if you are forced to spend 200 hours to get less satisfaction than a chocolate flavored piece of bread then why even bother. The emotional toll that long games take is far greater than the slightly less than nothing feeling of satisfaction you would get from completing it. Complication is only as satisfying as the application of it, you'll never get the sophistication you are looking for if you keep looking in games.
Nowadays mmo is developed for brainless players who don't want to think, only click "any button" to kill enemy. If You want mature games don't play WoW or other korean-like mmo's. Play EVE Online, Anarchy Online or any old school mmo. Maybe those don't have super graphics but have something that WoW or other game will never have - complexity, great trade skill/craft system and diversity in professions and skills system.
Yes MMO's are too easy now, no death penalty no decent crafting quest markers that lead you by the nose around the map. Level from 1 to 50 in a few days.
There is also no real markets with the advent of the auction house they have vanished. SWG, UO and Eve Online have some of the best in game markets to date.
DAoC and Eve Online has the best pvp game plays.
UO, SWG, Vangard and Eve Online has some of the best crafting I have seen in a game, mainly because the items you make are not worthless pieces of junk like they are in other games such as WoW and those of its ilk.
I blame WoW for opening up the mmo market for the casual gamer in all truth, call it what you like WoW did a good game at the time, but now the market is suffering from poorly developed and brainless innovation in the genre. Because the devs are trying to capture what WoW had.
So now WoW has become a lead weight around the mmo neck dragging down the genre in a mire of copy cat games that just can't make it and so become free to play.
damn, I fell for it. I believed this was an article regarding one of the biggest problems plaguing current MMOs but it was really a clever way of misleading me into an advertisement for Firefall.
It's too bad that in most cases it's not up to developers on what is done. Easy games that are accessible to all types/ages of gamers bring in the most players and their money so that's what we end up with. I am glad however that some developers are starting to take notice of this problem, even if it has taken a really long time.
read his previous 2 articles, as i had read both before; i knew somewhere within lines he will start promoting firefall. i wonder how he can complain about "too easy" mmo when his own game firefall is a "noobfeeder". not that it bothers me at all, i am noob, i like to think myslef as noob casual, so i like firefall. shame that this guy made such a great game and came here bashing the same formula he used very recently. shameful.
Boobs are LIFE, Boobs are LOVE, Boobs are JUSTICE, Boobs are mankind's HOPES and DREAMS. People who complain about boobs have lost their humanity.
All of those things the article claimed are lacking in todays MMO's exist in DDO, at least the last time I played. Other than that all the generic crap mmo's just turn me away, grind grind, get loot, repeat, where is the fun in that, especially when everything presents no challenge and no decent storyline. The new Neverwinter is just another boring grind game where you have almost no choice in what you do with your class, same boring stuff, can't wait till some actually interesting games come out.
90% of mmos out there are easy in terms of gameplay no challenge to them and are just endless grind , grind does not make a game interesting , hard or good at all. Just look at all those asian mmorpgs and some of the bad western ones , they have amazing graphics most of the time , decent gameplay , but they are just plain endless farm with endless low chance upgrades . I can't deny that this tactic prolongs the end game , but it does not make the game difficult or differentiate low skill players from good players at all its just endless runs of same dungeons , same outworld mobs to farm , crafting same thing , enchanting them to infinity and beyond till a fantasy game sword shines like light saber ....
I am not so sure there is one simple answer, like this or that "killed" the genre. And what IS "killed"? We have more MMOs than ever! But people just stay shorter in it. I guess what did change is that people now reach max level in a few weeks. Quests in EQ2 "vanilla" often took weeks just for a single quest line, but for what reasons?!
I recall camping 4 hours some named fish in Bubbleshire, and then another 4 hours because some other group stole it. Was that good? Hardly so. Sure, it took longer time than the instant-respawn of WOW, but was that truly better? Or in SWG, people waited 15 minutes in the line for a shuttle! Yes it was fun back then. But was it better? I hardly think so. I would not say WOW is easier, it is just quicker, more convenient. Sure, if you compare it to the MMO dinosaurs like UO or EQ1, yes. But those early MMOs had harships, if MMOs today had stayed like this it would still be a tiny niche market or 100k players tops. It simply would not be the big genre it is. So it's a bit a two edged blade, blaming WOW.
ONE element often ignored is certainly also, how MMOs stopped being simulated WORLDS and became THEMEPARKS. Games like SWG and UO could be played for years, because they were worlds to live in not mere quest hub lines like today's themepark MMOs. So dropping the sandbox part entirely was certainly a BIG reason for the genre's "death", an issue much more worth to look at, when it comes to the important question how to remedy MMOs, simply because just making them hard as in EQ1 and UO again would not work.
So for me the answer is rather: add the sandbox parts again, make WORLDS, not mere themeparks with questhubs.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
To be perfectly honest I never died in ANY starter zone and I have played every single MMO out there, starting with the first one, Meridian 59.
I think a lot of the stuff you are saying are spot on, but a lot of it is not challenging, its just time consuming (time sinks) and it gets tedious if you done it in a dozen of games. Its about time we get something new on the table that can excite the hardcore crew, because, we are still out there.
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe.
I've been talking about his ever sense WOW went easy mode. Back in VWOW things were not so easy and there were millions playing it then. It wasn't until Cat when everything got stupid easy that the subs started to drop off, was this the reason? who knows, blizzard maybe.
Peace
Lascer
Actually when Cata came out people were dropping in droves because it was too hard after getting used to Wrath content. There were posts all over the offical forums because people couldn't complete dungeons then blizzard patched the dungeons/raids and made it easier which still did not help sub numbers.
People have no idea what they want. How hard is it to develop a game with an indecisive population? It seems pretty hard for most devs.
Typical story
Players: The soup is too hot .Now the soup too cold. You know what I don't want soup anymore.
Devs: You asked for soup!!!
Players: Soup isn't in now we want toast!
Devs: Here is some toast.
Players: No butter? I hate this toast! I want a refund for not providing butter when you should have known I would want butter.
Devs: Here is the butter...
Players: You didn't spread it on the toast for me or cut in half like I want it. Devs you suck at making toast!
Moral of the story: Make your own damn breakfast!!
Present: Current offerings are low quality or soloable
Past:AoC, DCUO, FFXI,FFXIV 1.0 and ARR,WoW,Fallen Earth, Tabula Rasa, TSW, SWTOR, Rift, Aion, WAR, Darkfall, STO, CoH/CoV, GW2, Diaspora, EQ2, DDO, and a bunch of forgettable ftp games
I wouldn't exactly say things have become easier. If you look to games like FFXI, you could only do things with a team, and these were small monsters. Bosses were entire massive raids, the hard factor of the game wasn't so much visible cues from the enemy and dodging, it was larger numbers that were better than yours, that you couldn't beat because the system was so strict.
I do find it silly we're having this discussion. You have a ton of gamers screaming "OH GOD YES MAKE IT HARDCORE MAKE ME BLEED MAKE ME LOSE HALF MY EXP WHEN I DIE OH GOD I WANT TO SUFFER". Then when the game comes out, they cry it's too hard, and they leave the game, creating a tiny community that hangs on for dear life because they love stacked odds.
What we need more of is Guild Wars 2 or Neverwinter Online (action RPG, true control of combat), but with depth in it like Dark Souls (harder, stamina, etc), but without systems that makes the game unplayable (item destruction, EXP loss, level loss, etc). Then again, people would scream and whine that the game has no fear of death and demand permanent death, drop items on death, etc. They wouldn't be happy with just the challenge.
Even worse, they'd never be happy with a system where they could scale the difficulty up as much as they want, but get the same rewards as others, just able to get them faster than others. It's never been about the difficulty: It's been about showing off that bright shiny sword and being the most special little snowflake, even though they cry and scream that it's all about the difficulty.
There is so much arrogance in this 'article' and the answer isn't a simple yes or no. Lets rather say that as a business gaming companies pander to their audience. Since a majority of gamers don't finish games, its hard to argue that games have gotten 'too easy' even though they have indeed gotten easier. In short, while games have gotten easier its the audience that is primarily driving the movement.
Yes MMO's have become to simple and too easy, but its not just MMO's its just about any RPG type game. Sadly I dont play much anymore because I just dont see simple and easy entertaining, I use to play games for the challenge of them, and they making you use some brain power to figure things out. but now games have become like playing a movie game hybrid just slide right along until the end of the ride
Waiting for:EQ-Next, ArcheAge (not so much anymore) Now Playing: N/A Worst MMO: FFXIV Favorite MMO: FFXI
Originally posted by toddze Yes MMO's have become to simple and too easy, but its not just MMO's its just about any RPG type game. Sadly I dont play much anymore because I just dont see simple and easy entertaining, I use to play games for the challenge of them, and they making you use some brain power to figure things out. but now games have become like playing a movie game hybrid just slide right along until the end of the ride
not even any rpg type game. just about every game. Like tripwire's ceo has said that cod has almost ruined an entire generation of gamers.
Comments
Reporter: What's behind Blizzard success, and how do you make your gamers happy?
Blizzard Boss: Making gamers happy is not my concern, making money.. yes!
Chess isnt a simple game, you have so many different moves u can do, it pieces does somthign different and so on. In MMO of today u press 1 button and repeat and u win.
FFXI was brilliant. At that time MMO's were supposed to be the next big thing, so much more potential for the genre. I am literally stunned at what MMO's have become.
Yes too easy and too simple. The makers have to realize even the hardcore casuals wanting things handed to them on a silver platter get bored of it. They cry for wanting all the stuff others who put effort into it want but at the same time they will likely get bored and move on much quicker, not having any sense of accomplishment in the task.
Simplifying the game has the same effect. It just dumbs down the thought behind it and really makes it hard to invest time into a game. Look at WoW, the butchering of the talent system has actually demeaned the aspect of leveling to somehow be even more boring then it use to be giving no sense of accomplishment, all while having a feeling of lack of choice which makes the experience that much weaker. Sure, often choice existed as pre-established builds for some, but it made it feel like you were doing something.
So long as games are made "Easy and Simple" people will just be that much quicker to get bored and move on. Why invest in a game if you clear through it almost instantly?
I completely agree, where MMO has become a sit back and watch this show mode. It doesn't even feel like game. I played GW2 for a week and quit. Couldn't take the casual approach any more.
That why I switched to Dark Fall Unholy Wars. It is a carebear nightmare. Full loot, open world pvp. You farm 3 days to raid for 1 days. You loose your gear either through dura (no repair) or someone takes it from you.
Yes MMO are now in easy mode but we have few exceptions. One of them is Dark Fall. Other one is EVE and MO.
Now Playing: DARKFALL Unholy Wars "Return to Open World, Full Loot PvP, Conquest in a Sandbox MMO with player driven economy! Just like classic MMOs!"
WoW is a casual game and always has been. The fact that it has become even more casual is unfortunate for people who like needless complication, but not unprecedented. Games should never be work, the more seemingly sophisticated a game becomes the more it becomes work and it is therefore no longer a game. You and many others insist on turning a casual cool down into a horribly constipated wait, bake, and fake fest. Easy bake ovens are easy because the experience of getting a brownie in a relatively short amount of time makes you feel like you could do anything well and motivates you to do more, however if you are forced to spend 200 hours to get less satisfaction than a chocolate flavored piece of bread then why even bother. The emotional toll that long games take is far greater than the slightly less than nothing feeling of satisfaction you would get from completing it. Complication is only as satisfying as the application of it, you'll never get the sophistication you are looking for if you keep looking in games.
Nowadays mmo is developed for brainless players who don't want to think, only click "any button" to kill enemy. If You want mature games don't play WoW or other korean-like mmo's. Play EVE Online, Anarchy Online or any old school mmo. Maybe those don't have super graphics but have something that WoW or other game will never have - complexity, great trade skill/craft system and diversity in professions and skills system.
Yes MMO's are too easy now, no death penalty no decent crafting quest markers that lead you by the nose around the map. Level from 1 to 50 in a few days.
There is also no real markets with the advent of the auction house they have vanished. SWG, UO and Eve Online have some of the best in game markets to date.
DAoC and Eve Online has the best pvp game plays.
UO, SWG, Vangard and Eve Online has some of the best crafting I have seen in a game, mainly because the items you make are not worthless pieces of junk like they are in other games such as WoW and those of its ilk.
I blame WoW for opening up the mmo market for the casual gamer in all truth, call it what you like WoW did a good game at the time, but now the market is suffering from poorly developed and brainless innovation in the genre. Because the devs are trying to capture what WoW had.
So now WoW has become a lead weight around the mmo neck dragging down the genre in a mire of copy cat games that just can't make it and so become free to play.
read his previous 2 articles, as i had read both before; i knew somewhere within lines he will start promoting firefall. i wonder how he can complain about "too easy" mmo when his own game firefall is a "noobfeeder". not that it bothers me at all, i am noob, i like to think myslef as noob casual, so i like firefall. shame that this guy made such a great game and came here bashing the same formula he used very recently. shameful.
Boobs are LIFE, Boobs are LOVE, Boobs are JUSTICE, Boobs are mankind's HOPES and DREAMS. People who complain about boobs have lost their humanity.
All of those things the article claimed are lacking in todays MMO's exist in DDO, at least the last time I played. Other than that all the generic crap mmo's just turn me away, grind grind, get loot, repeat, where is the fun in that, especially when everything presents no challenge and no decent storyline. The new Neverwinter is just another boring grind game where you have almost no choice in what you do with your class, same boring stuff, can't wait till some actually interesting games come out.
The only MMOs which are left out there with a challenge are Secret World and EvE.
That´s about it
well said.We will see what firefall has to offer on release.
Hope it does not dissapoint like marvel heroes did
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
anyone who says vanilla WoW was casual...
never went for rank 14(15?) in pvp (lawl its been a few years... i made rank 13)
never raided vanilla content pre-nerfs
it all went downhill at 1st expansion when the development shifted goals
I am not so sure there is one simple answer, like this or that "killed" the genre. And what IS "killed"? We have more MMOs than ever! But people just stay shorter in it. I guess what did change is that people now reach max level in a few weeks. Quests in EQ2 "vanilla" often took weeks just for a single quest line, but for what reasons?!
ONE element often ignored is certainly also, how MMOs stopped being simulated WORLDS and became THEMEPARKS. Games like SWG and UO could be played for years, because they were worlds to live in not mere quest hub lines like today's themepark MMOs. So dropping the sandbox part entirely was certainly a BIG reason for the genre's "death", an issue much more worth to look at, when it comes to the important question how to remedy MMOs, simply because just making them hard as in EQ1 and UO again would not work.I recall camping 4 hours some named fish in Bubbleshire, and then another 4 hours because some other group stole it. Was that good? Hardly so. Sure, it took longer time than the instant-respawn of WOW, but was that truly better? Or in SWG, people waited 15 minutes in the line for a shuttle! Yes it was fun back then. But was it better? I hardly think so. I would not say WOW is easier, it is just quicker, more convenient. Sure, if you compare it to the MMO dinosaurs like UO or EQ1, yes. But those early MMOs had harships, if MMOs today had stayed like this it would still be a tiny niche market or 100k players tops. It simply would not be the big genre it is. So it's a bit a two edged blade, blaming WOW.
So for me the answer is rather: add the sandbox parts again, make WORLDS, not mere themeparks with questhubs.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
To be perfectly honest I never died in ANY starter zone and I have played every single MMO out there, starting with the first one, Meridian 59.
I think a lot of the stuff you are saying are spot on, but a lot of it is not challenging, its just time consuming (time sinks) and it gets tedious if you done it in a dozen of games. Its about time we get something new on the table that can excite the hardcore crew, because, we are still out there.
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe.
Actually when Cata came out people were dropping in droves because it was too hard after getting used to Wrath content. There were posts all over the offical forums because people couldn't complete dungeons then blizzard patched the dungeons/raids and made it easier which still did not help sub numbers.
People have no idea what they want. How hard is it to develop a game with an indecisive population? It seems pretty hard for most devs.
Typical story
Players: The soup is too hot .Now the soup too cold. You know what I don't want soup anymore.
Devs: You asked for soup!!!
Players: Soup isn't in now we want toast!
Devs: Here is some toast.
Players: No butter? I hate this toast! I want a refund for not providing butter when you should have known I would want butter.
Devs: Here is the butter...
Players: You didn't spread it on the toast for me or cut in half like I want it. Devs you suck at making toast!
Moral of the story: Make your own damn breakfast!!
Current PC Build
http://pcpartpicker.com/b/p8RBD3
Present: Current offerings are low quality or soloable
Past:AoC, DCUO, FFXI,FFXIV 1.0 and ARR,WoW,Fallen Earth, Tabula Rasa, TSW, SWTOR, Rift, Aion, WAR, Darkfall, STO, CoH/CoV, GW2, Diaspora, EQ2, DDO, and a bunch of forgettable ftp games
It is a thoroughly conditioned response.
I wouldn't exactly say things have become easier. If you look to games like FFXI, you could only do things with a team, and these were small monsters. Bosses were entire massive raids, the hard factor of the game wasn't so much visible cues from the enemy and dodging, it was larger numbers that were better than yours, that you couldn't beat because the system was so strict.
I do find it silly we're having this discussion. You have a ton of gamers screaming "OH GOD YES MAKE IT HARDCORE MAKE ME BLEED MAKE ME LOSE HALF MY EXP WHEN I DIE OH GOD I WANT TO SUFFER". Then when the game comes out, they cry it's too hard, and they leave the game, creating a tiny community that hangs on for dear life because they love stacked odds.
What we need more of is Guild Wars 2 or Neverwinter Online (action RPG, true control of combat), but with depth in it like Dark Souls (harder, stamina, etc), but without systems that makes the game unplayable (item destruction, EXP loss, level loss, etc). Then again, people would scream and whine that the game has no fear of death and demand permanent death, drop items on death, etc. They wouldn't be happy with just the challenge.
Even worse, they'd never be happy with a system where they could scale the difficulty up as much as they want, but get the same rewards as others, just able to get them faster than others. It's never been about the difficulty: It's been about showing off that bright shiny sword and being the most special little snowflake, even though they cry and scream that it's all about the difficulty.
Waiting for:EQ-Next, ArcheAge (not so much anymore)
Now Playing: N/A
Worst MMO: FFXIV
Favorite MMO: FFXI
not even any rpg type game. just about every game. Like tripwire's ceo has said that cod has almost ruined an entire generation of gamers.