All mmorpg's are easy, with VERY few exceptions.... Why ?
I would like to get down to barebones of who likes easy without referring to someone else or "they".
I understand the popular games are Elder Scrolls Online, Guild Wars 2, Final Fantasy 14 and Black Desert Online. To each their own and great for you as a player.
BUT is easy game play one of it's popular features for YOU ?
I understand easy games have harder content too, but do you like the easy parts ?
Just trying to understand "Easy" !
This reminds me of a Family Guy episode where Peter and the gang were in search of where Jokes originate from
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One popular debate about the definition of 'easy' is the Vanilla vs Live version of WOW.
Some says Vanilla was easier some others think Live is easier.
The truth is they are both right and wrong.
Vanilla had easier Boss mechanics, but it required more group coordination and teamplay to get there, as thrash mobs were generally more challenging than the Boss itself.
WOW Live has more difficult Boss mechanics but everything else is kinda one shottable.
Because of the harder thrash mobs everything in Vanilla took longer, even leveling required some sort of grouping if you wanted to speed things up.
In Live there is not such problem, every mob or even group of mobs can easily be killed by a single player.
The hard part of WoW Live is restricted to a small elite of hardcore riders, 90% of Live population will never touch the 'hard' part (unlike in Vanilla).
So I guess that 'easy' in MMORPGs means 'less time consuming'.
So to answer your question, why people like 'easy' games?
The simple answer is, because they have less time to play.
With these facts, and at they end you "they"... Can I ask, how do YOU feel about easy and the reasons you stated ?
Do you like less time consuming and like less time to play versus a challenge ?
That's what I do.
There are periods of time I have more time and play MMORPGs, and other periods that I prefer Single players, because I have less time.
As someone pointed out, there are not truly difficult MMORPGs to play, just MMORPGs more time consuming, due to the fact they require group play.
And that's what MMORPGs should be about, it should be about challenging group content (by challenging I mean that requires group cooperation and coordination).
If I want real personal challenge, I play Single players in Nightmare mode or Dark Souls.
But to me 'easy' MMORPGs are a waste of developers time.
Sure they can make loads of money but I believe you could do more money from Single Player.
Skyrim with some sort of microtransactions (Cosmetics, DLCs and MODs download) would make more money than ESO in my opinion.
For me MMORPGs are all the games made before Vanilla WoW, I consider Vanilla WoW the last true MMORPG.
Today games are just glorified Single Player games with Massive Multiplayer in it, I can play all of them in autopilot while watching Netflix.
Back in vanilla less than 5% could clear Naxx. Sunwell in TBC shattered even world's top guilds.
Reaching HWL/GM was a nightmare in WoW vanilla. Most people failed at it, even nolifers who just played the game.
WoW high-end content was never easy. It has gotten easier compared to vanilla. It offers different levels of difficulty post WotLK but high end content is still hard, even for hardcore players.
Now I haven't played BfA but I doubt if things have drastically changed.
And as for @DMKano's comment about "time sinks", there is some validity like timer spawns for bosses, but mostly, those sinks were supposed to be part of "the living world." If one 's first assumption is that the developers are trying to get you playing and paying longer, it's not the right game for you. If you see the "downtime" (aka: waiting for ships) as "This is what it's like in real life.", then you may have found a home and paying each month is a no brainer.
@Scorchien's example of "hard", EVERY MMO has some hard content ion it. EVERY one of them. What most players do is look at the whole game and decide, easy or hard? I've heard UO is a great game. Does it have "easy parts", too? Don't get so defensive.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
Time-sinks vs hard content. I'm really aware of games that make you travel for ten mins. to get to content or have small inventory space to force players to make multiple trips to clean out their inventory in order to slow gameplay. Or games that give you a ton of drops that are highly situational forcing players to spend a large amount of time sorting inventory and deciding what inventory is needed for what content they plan on doing.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
Games that are hard with no grind are called action games.
Different note: You might want to pick a different genre if all the new mmorpgs you play today are on autopilot for you.
Even in Vanilla WOW the raids were far more than simple tank and spank.
In fact, one reason I won't raid is they really have become far too much of a "dance with the stars" or jump around and keep out of the glowy spots, guess I am lazier now days.
I loath action combat as well, too freaking "busy" for me, especially if there is a bunch of dodging and rolling.
So yeah, put me in the camp who certainly prefers easier, I don't even play single player games in much but normal mode, perhaps a notch higher the 2nd time thru, but never on hardcore mode.
I play for one main reason, to make progress towards my personal goals for the session. (as efficiently as possible of course)
I'm not there for the challenge, to hang with friends (don't have any), to do good deeds for others as I had that mostly beaten out of me years ago or to have "fun." (whatever the hell that means in terms of games)
When I log off did I accomplish any progression (however its measured) and is so how much.
If not, I examine the reasons why and adjust my next session to avoid whatever it was. (bad groups, ganking, poor choice of leveling spot or the most common yet hardest to combat, dreaded and feared "wife aggro.")
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
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Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
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"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
The way i would like to see these games operate the gear ideas is to have players SOLO THEIR weapons/elite weapons of choice.
One try per day 24 hours,if you fail need to wait another day.This has players PLAY THE GAME<move onto other ideas/content/systems,if the game doesn't do anything else,guess what,the game is crap.
Way too much focus is on the dungeon loot runs,this does not make a GAME nor does it have anything to do with role playing,it is simply loot grinding w/o any other form of gameplay.You cannot make ANYTHING too easy or you run out of content.Perhaps the idea of getting tired,often scoffed at "i paid my money,let me play is actually the proper way to design and play a role playing game.You should get tired,you should be hungry,thirsty,you should need to build a home,trade,sell etc etc,it is called living a life within a game world.
NM all this CHEAP game building,nm player stalls,how about store fronts,how about players building and designing weapons and armor,there are a LOT of ideas and things to do if only developers put some work into their games.
Point being,nm the gear grinds,nm cheap game designs,removing easy and turning it into a just another form of loot grind be it Bosses or Raids/dungeons is NOT quality mmorpog design.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Me, me, me! I like easy...you mean money, right?
"All mmorpg's are easy"
I see people say that alot. So whats the problem? Take off your gear thats not going to be easy then.....or you can quit. Thats also not easy to do, right?
Help others - not easy. Do not be rude to some one that asking stupid questions or do stupid things - not easy. Try to have fun in the game thats not fun at all - thats super hard.
I dont get it, ive seen alot of elitists or hardcore players - they are weird. They like to call everyone noobs or casuals and tell them to leave their (yes, their) game. I really want to see one day all casuals actually leave...oh wait, then the game will dies.
First of all, all these game not easy for me. It takes so much effort for me to understand how do play this unbalanced BS, that for some reason called a "game". Games are suppose to be fun.
Recently i joined a guild, and i spoke with GL, he mention that he spends about 14 hrs/day on his guild maintenance. And huge amount of gold. WTF? Is that easy? Is that fun? Thats freaking slavery.
I use to play 12+ hrs per day, that was easy. Now im exhausted after just one veteran dungeon run. (ESO).
I dunno why you call them easy in the fist place or why anyone in their right mind wants games to be challenging. To show off? "Look at me im super awesome, im the best." But if other players arent casuals or noobs, they dont care. They might be even better than you.
In the end players are just slaves, sitting in front of thier PC(console) alone in the room, wasting their precious time on some stupid challenges that was made by the devs that would never play their own game (or any other), but they make money, they have prestigious job and thats freaking REAL challenge and REAL achievement of their life.
Game just have to be fun. Atleast they was when i was kid.
I just did random daily dingeon (eso) with my guildmates (they are low lvl newbies and they admit it). Im newbie too, atleast thats what i thought....
Healer tried to tank and aggro everything....that wasnt fun.
P.S. Seriously kids these days.... sitting in warm house with light, water, food and all kinds of gadgets but asking: "I need challenge, yarr!"
"Look at me, I defeated super mega hardcore boss (in this game for kids) - im cool."
Practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent.
"At one point technology meant making tech that could get to the moon, now it means making tech that could get you a taxi."
In MMOs sure, gearing and leveling make a big difference but even beyond that the familiarity with the game makes it easier.
I find overland questing in ESO extremely easy. And yet I constantly see players die in fights where I can 1 or 2 shot the enemy or pack. I think a lot of people tend to forget about that learning curve when they call for more difficulty.
In single player games it's much simpler of course to provide a range of difficulties so you can tailor it just how you like it. Multiplayer games have to do it by offering different types of content.
I just go with whatever difficulty as the mood strikes me. For me it's mostly about how much attention and effort I feel like putting into the game in the moment. I have nothing to prove and just want to have fun with it.
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Many world's top guilds got disbanded during these contents. They had ALL the possible gear up to those raids. They had all the time in the world. They tried for VERY long hours 5-6 days a week, for months and they failed to clear the contents. Many of them gave up, and MANY of them disbanded.
Even the guilds which had these contents on farm never claimed these were easy contents. They all agreed these were the hardest challenges they had faced in their gaming careers.
These raids, in EVERY sense of the word, were hard contents.
Of course there are more examples in WoW, but then Blizzard introduced the tiered difficulty of raiding so everyone could see all contents. And also nerfed the contents after a couple of months so everyone could clear. But the top tier specially upon release remained hard and wouldn't become doable merely by investing more time.
I can also talk about EVE. Yes EVE is an easy game if you live a pacifist life and don't mind blowing up once in a while. But if you wanted to climb the hierarchy, it is a brutal world and VERY hard game to play.
MMORPGs have various layers. There are easy layers and there are time-consuming layers, true. But a few got actually hard as fuck layers as well.
You can see my sci-fi/WW2 book recommendations.
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This isn't a signature, you just think it is.
Top guilds never had any problem with the availability of people or people showing up on time. There were so many other elements involved in a running a successful raid and taking down a hard boss. I played this game for 6 years and was always among the world's top 10 guilds. Acted as leader, officer and such. When recruiting new players we rarely cared about gear if we had a couple of weeks before new contents to gear up the applicant.
And a fun fact: as a high-end raiding player, I had to spend less time in game than casual players overall, yet clear all contents way before everyone else. Because when there's difficulty involved, then skill matters as well. It's a mistake to think that top guilds were top guilds because they played more than everyone else.
Yes the whole game is about carrots on sticks. But there were various levels of difficulties involved. And high-end was a complete different beast.
I don't mean to offend you mate , but I don't think you were ever involved in the high-end raiding scene of the WoW.
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