Bollocks. I know for a fact that if I stick my fiancee in front of a computer with any MMO running, she will die on even normal content; I know this because I've tried to get her into some. You're just so used to the mental gymnastics and muscle memory that go into playing any modern game that you think it's "brainless".
MMO combat isn't "dumb" or "brainless", but it IS a lot worse than combat in pretty much any other genre of videogames. That is the problem: not that the combat itself is terrible, but that it's terrible in comparison to other games we play.
I have to agree with you. I have friends who aren't gamers on any level and controlling any video game character (When I've shown them some games) was always a difficult proposition.
Some people have no problems and some have issues. I'll be honest, I have yet to become adept at using any current game controller.
For some time now, I've been wanting to make a thread titled "Rotations are difficult" to explore precisely that point. While accusing a game's combat of being "nothing but 1 1 1 2 3 1 1 1 2 3" is very clearly an insult, the fact remains that many people who play the game (or who would play the game) cannot reliably hit 1 1 1 2 3 while also retaining good situational awareness (such as being sure to target the correct mob). If you were to sit your nongamer mom down at the keyboard and prepare her for endgame raiding, she would need extensive training. And even then there's a limit to how well she could possibly do. We call the control mechanics trivial because we've been playing MMOs and other games for years, but people who only dabble in games have their hands full with just the basics.
It would be bad for business and bad for the industry to deliberately close off MMOs to a large section of the population by using more and more complicated controls to increase the difficulty. While a few niche games will try this, don't bother wishing for it to spread to the whole genre.
It's interesting how often the terms 'boring' and 'repetitious' are equated with 'difficult'. Thus anytime these two things are removed from a game in any way, the game is said to have been 'dumbed down' by those unfortunate souls who had to end up slogging through months of pounding out the same combination of keys that can still be used today to accomplish the same feat, but in only a week. The difficulty is identical. The key combination hasn't changed. Only the amount of times you have to repeat it is different. So things aren't dumber in most cases, just faster.
I think this is a brilliant point to make here, and its one thats really at the centre of the debate. It is quite clear to see that both sides have credible claims. However for me as a player mmo play has always been about the social interactions, and has been my main reason to participate. I can honestly say that my social experience in the genre has totally changed since the first time i loaded up and logged in. Let me give you an example of this. As the World of warcraft is arguably at the centre of the "dumbing down" criticism ill refer to a point from its patch changes.
Back in August 2006 the patch 1.12 titled "the drums of war" was released allowing players to participate in cross realm battle grounds. personally this totally turned the way i played on its head. No longer did i need to work on my reptuation and skill within the server only battle grounds in order to keep my spot in the top pvp team on the server. In fact within a week or so i had totally lost contact with pvp buddies who before the patch i spent large amounts of time playing with and got to know well. I personally would put this interaction on a par with meeting someone in real life. Soon i was able to just leach for honor and not even participate. So for me i feel the changes to the games content that caused the removal of my own personal teamplay, Has dumbed down play for myself. regardless of the fact difficulty did not alter, as battlegrounds were still competitive zones.
Does anyone else have any experiences similar to this? or maybe the total opposite? has game changes made the social aspect better for yourself?
DAOC for me. It was ridiculous difficult when I first started playing, and I was playing a ranger, which didn't get into groups easily. Throughout leveling I made a lot of friends forming groups for the other misfits that couldn't get groups, even had healers messaging me when I'd log on wanting to know if I was getting a group going. PvP was more fun also, because you knew your enemies by reputation after awhile, and they knew you (if you were any good.) Everyone was from the same server.
This went away when they started making leveling easier and solo-able. Same thing happened in PvP when they made travelling the frontiers super fast with teleports to the fight and boats that would get you places quickly. After that, pvp turned into a lemming run to see who could get killed by the wizards fireball the fastest, instead of having any strategy and planning. Massive keep fights, sneaking through the enemies territory to sack their keep and anything exciting just turned into a zerg fest at one castle or the other where people would just teleport to the fight and die over and over again because there was not much of a downside to getting killed.
If you've ever quantitatively analzyed a MMORPG like WoW, then you would have realized that it's kind of a loaded question.
You can have games with trivial mechanics, like chess, that require incredible strategical thinking and cannot be easily tackled with any kind of calculation. For WoW, the analysis is difficult enough to force most people to use simulators to optimize their builds; there is very little if any exact quantitative analysis for WoW, although it could be said that a lot of it is linear programming (this does not necessarily make it trivial).
The approach that a lot of MMO's have taken is to make the game varied and simple enough for most players to do well at i.e. advance in content, but difficult enough so that EXACT analysis i.e. exact optimization is not so easy.
Actually, I feel I can say with quite some authority what the spirit and intent of original MMORPGs were, and what the core of the genre aimed to be before the Casual Invasion and the WoW induced Dark Ages.
MMOs were initially pationate games made by nerds trying to bring D&D to computers. Bringing to life virtual WORLDS with deep RPG mechanics and a heavy HEAVY social element. That is all but gone now. So when I hear someone say MMO, I think core, true MMOs. Not these Diablo games with monthly fees.
The intent of the first MMOs were the same as they are today, to make money for the developer. They catered to their primary audience, which at the time happened to be nerds. Over time, that changed as games went mainstream and the nerd audience became a minuscule part of the marketplace. Games evolve. Deal with it.
And like with many bands before they go "mainstream" their goal is to make music they enjoy, where money is a sub goal. Same deal here. And if games were evolving, I'd be glad. But they're not. They're getting smaller and simpler by each year. That's not evolution. If humans suddenly got a smaller brain, lost our thumbs, and started going extint, would you call that progress?
And no, I'm not going to "deal" with my favorite genre of games totally changing into something I don't recognize. I'm going to be vocal so some sane developer can make a game that's actually good.
And like with many bands before they go "mainstream" their goal is to make music they enjoy, where money is a sub goal. Same deal here. And if games were evolving, I'd be glad. But they're not. They're getting smaller and simpler by each year. That's not evolution. If humans suddenly got a smaller brain, lost our thumbs, and started going extint, would you call that progress?
And no, I'm not going to "deal" with my favorite genre of games totally changing into something I don't recognize. I'm going to be vocal so some sane developer can make a game that's actually good.
Presumably, all bands make music they enjoy, otherwise they wouldn't bother. However, enjoyment doesn't pay the bills and everyone eventually has to grow up and realize that being solvent is more important than being happy. If you're lucky, you can do both, but when push comes to shove, making money and being able to eat is always going to be the bigger consideration.
Games are getting more financially successful all the time, if they weren't, if there wasn't a significant financial market there, people would stop making new games. Whether or not you like the games that they make is irrelevant, there's a massive audience out there who apparently do like it and that makes your opinions largely irrelevant. Don't like it? Too bad, they're laughing all the way to the bank. The games that you think are actually good are financial failures. Nobody in their right mind would make one and if they did, it just wouldn't survive. There isn't enough of a market for it. No, I don't expect you to care, but sitting around on a forum screaming about how much you hate the MMO market seems a bit immature, doesn't it? Go find something else to do with your time if you hate it so much. That's what an adult does.
Comments
For some time now, I've been wanting to make a thread titled "Rotations are difficult" to explore precisely that point. While accusing a game's combat of being "nothing but 1 1 1 2 3 1 1 1 2 3" is very clearly an insult, the fact remains that many people who play the game (or who would play the game) cannot reliably hit 1 1 1 2 3 while also retaining good situational awareness (such as being sure to target the correct mob). If you were to sit your nongamer mom down at the keyboard and prepare her for endgame raiding, she would need extensive training. And even then there's a limit to how well she could possibly do. We call the control mechanics trivial because we've been playing MMOs and other games for years, but people who only dabble in games have their hands full with just the basics.
It would be bad for business and bad for the industry to deliberately close off MMOs to a large section of the population by using more and more complicated controls to increase the difficulty. While a few niche games will try this, don't bother wishing for it to spread to the whole genre.
DAOC for me. It was ridiculous difficult when I first started playing, and I was playing a ranger, which didn't get into groups easily. Throughout leveling I made a lot of friends forming groups for the other misfits that couldn't get groups, even had healers messaging me when I'd log on wanting to know if I was getting a group going. PvP was more fun also, because you knew your enemies by reputation after awhile, and they knew you (if you were any good.) Everyone was from the same server.
This went away when they started making leveling easier and solo-able. Same thing happened in PvP when they made travelling the frontiers super fast with teleports to the fight and boats that would get you places quickly. After that, pvp turned into a lemming run to see who could get killed by the wizards fireball the fastest, instead of having any strategy and planning. Massive keep fights, sneaking through the enemies territory to sack their keep and anything exciting just turned into a zerg fest at one castle or the other where people would just teleport to the fight and die over and over again because there was not much of a downside to getting killed.
If you've ever quantitatively analzyed a MMORPG like WoW, then you would have realized that it's kind of a loaded question.
You can have games with trivial mechanics, like chess, that require incredible strategical thinking and cannot be easily tackled with any kind of calculation. For WoW, the analysis is difficult enough to force most people to use simulators to optimize their builds; there is very little if any exact quantitative analysis for WoW, although it could be said that a lot of it is linear programming (this does not necessarily make it trivial).
The approach that a lot of MMO's have taken is to make the game varied and simple enough for most players to do well at i.e. advance in content, but difficult enough so that EXACT analysis i.e. exact optimization is not so easy.
And like with many bands before they go "mainstream" their goal is to make music they enjoy, where money is a sub goal. Same deal here. And if games were evolving, I'd be glad. But they're not. They're getting smaller and simpler by each year. That's not evolution. If humans suddenly got a smaller brain, lost our thumbs, and started going extint, would you call that progress?
And no, I'm not going to "deal" with my favorite genre of games totally changing into something I don't recognize. I'm going to be vocal so some sane developer can make a game that's actually good.
Presumably, all bands make music they enjoy, otherwise they wouldn't bother. However, enjoyment doesn't pay the bills and everyone eventually has to grow up and realize that being solvent is more important than being happy. If you're lucky, you can do both, but when push comes to shove, making money and being able to eat is always going to be the bigger consideration.
Games are getting more financially successful all the time, if they weren't, if there wasn't a significant financial market there, people would stop making new games. Whether or not you like the games that they make is irrelevant, there's a massive audience out there who apparently do like it and that makes your opinions largely irrelevant. Don't like it? Too bad, they're laughing all the way to the bank. The games that you think are actually good are financial failures. Nobody in their right mind would make one and if they did, it just wouldn't survive. There isn't enough of a market for it. No, I don't expect you to care, but sitting around on a forum screaming about how much you hate the MMO market seems a bit immature, doesn't it? Go find something else to do with your time if you hate it so much. That's what an adult does.
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
Hope: None