Most AAA MMOs made after 2003 are aimed at those who are brain dead (or at least, they seem to be based on the level of depth these modern games have).
Not only are they near 95% carbon copies of one another, but they offer no risk vs reward, no challenge, no danger, nothing really hard to strive for. The only big budget MMO I've seen since 2003 that was actually worth a damn was Vanguard, and that had its own issues, and has been dumbed down over the years.
It many not be a MMO, but Path of Exile may get your interest.
It requires you to think a lot, and on the fly, fast or it can have huge concequences.
I have played the game 2k+ hours and I still enjoy it. Right now I am taking a break before the next league starts (4months of new leagues with special additions each time - kind of D2 ladder resets but with a twist)
The game is basicly what D3 should have been - and more. It is highly complicated, engaging and fun at all times imo.
Atleast try it out. It is completely free to play, the only thing not being cosmetic in the shop is stash tabs (and you can create other chars or use your default 4 if thats what you want)
Other than that as others has suggested TSW (The Secret World) is my best suggestion other than PoE. It requires you to think, hell I used several days to just complete one quest, since it was that hard.
Eve is as braindead as the rest if you're not one to FCing.
Depends what kind of person you are.
If you think EVE is "follow the leader, press F1 and F2 when he shouts on comms" then you are one of the 80% of nullsec scrubs that think this game is all about 1 leader shouting commands and the player following it.
EVE can be so much more, as long as you don't take the easy way.
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"
The problem with TSW is... almost all of its content is instanced. At least all the good content.
It plays like a singleplayer MMO with optional COOP. There's very little feel of an actual virtual world. It shows that the designer was originally planning on making a singleplayer game before Funcom tried to make it an MMO.
I think that's a good thing. If you are investigating a long-lost Temple of Set in Conan, you don't want to be seeing lots of other players in there all doing the same thing - you're supposed to have discovered a forgotten temple, not the local shopping mall.
Then you should be playing a singleplayer game. Or the game should have been a singleplayer game.
Instead it launched with a monthly fee. There's a very good reason it crashed and burned and made Funcom swear off MMOs.
Instancing is NEVER a good solution in MMOs. If your game needs instancing to function, there was probably a better genre it could have been developed in.
As for WoW being challenging.. maybe if that's the only MMO you've ever played? But WoW was the most casual MMO on the market when it launched, and still is. You can take a simple game and have a lot of competition in it, but at the end of the day, it's a very simple game, with simple challenges. Even tanking in WoW is a hell of a lot easier than tanking in a game like DAoC. And you have so many third party add ons to help.
Here's a few options to make mmorpg's a challenge...
Turn off the monitor during fights play by just sound effects
Use your feet to control the mouse and keyboard
Take a tequila shot every time you get hit
Try to play with your dog sleeping on the keyboard
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own. -- Herman Melville
I've been downloading random MMOs left and right and am getting bored of them. Recently Mafia (StarCraft 2) and Gran Turismo 6 have heavily caught my attention but I miss RPGs. It was then I realized I actually enjoy having to constantly think (or in GT6's case, memorize + think).
MMOs often devolve into button mashing or straight up muscle memory. Final Fantasy XIV attempted to deviate from this but when you fight the same boss 10 times there isn't a whole lot of thinking involved; you cannot, however, say the same about Gran Turismo 6 despite having run the same track hundreds of times.
I've though thought about going back into EvE Online...but besides that, is there anything else that isn't brain dead? I'd even consider EvE fairly brain dead if you're just PvE-ing for money.
So you're comparing PvP games (SC2 and GT6) to PvE games, and asking why PvE is not like PvP?
Or you're talking about the PvE features of said games (competing against the computer), in which case GT6 is just as brain dead as MMO's are. Memorize the tracks, choose the best settings -> win.
Either way this makes no sense.
I don't play SC2 competitively anymore. While Mafia is defined as "PvP", it is slow and requires quite a bit of thinking to not kill your own team.
I never play online with GT6. Judging by your tone you actually have no clue what you're talking about. Memorizing the tracks themselves takes MUCH longer than any MMO instance I've played. Laguna Seca/MazdaSpeedWay's corkscrew, for example, is tackled differently based on the car you have. When you get into monstrous tracks like "The Ring", which I still don't have memorized, the elevation differences generally occur throughout the apex/exit of a corner. It doesn't matter what car you have because if you're hitting those corners at 200km/h+ and you use the wrong line (which I still do), you'll wipe out. I will admit I am heavily biased towards motorsports as I race in real life. Please do not compare a sport that has been around before you were born to a genre of games that will never be considered a real sport.
Originally posted by Serenes
Originally posted by Jean-Luc_Picard
Originally posted by Lienhart
Originally posted by Robokapp
have you tried world of warcraft as a non-dps role?
play a healer or better yet a tank in any raiding game and you'll move away from the brain-dead quickly.
You are joking right? I main tank in every MMO I have played. It's still a rotation with the occasional off taunt and dodge some fire. How the hell is that not brain-dead?
...oh I forgot, move boss into corner and LoS pull everything.
Yet I'm sure that like all the others who make such claims, you won't be able to link us your achievements from defeating heroic mode raid bosses in WoW.
Typical
Good lord this.
People constantly bitching about how "brain dead" WoW is but I doubt they have ever done Heroics, agh its so frustrating.
Considering only 55 guilds have done 14/14 HM SoO and its been out for months I would say that is pretty hard content, and Garrosh has been considered "easy" by most top end guilds.
Back when I was a fat high school kid in grade 11, World of Warcraft launched and I spent my Friday nights rotting on vent with 39 other people. Waiting generally took longer than actually clearing any raids. I'm not in the state of life where I can dedicate hours to video games for the sake of getting a shiny item. I admit I have only done LFR and LFD stuff but I'm not about to backwards in life progression for a leisure hobby nor do I enjoy the elitism that generally occurs with players that participate in such things.
Do you want to tell your friends you cleared 14/14 HM SoO (I have no clue what it is) or show them a video of sparks flying off your knee pucks as you knee drag through an S bend at 170+km/h? I still have fun in video games...but it sure as hell won't be fun if ppl start comparing e-peen sizes based on their gear.
And with all the ppl that told me Secret World, thanks. Downloading now =D
Here's a few options to make mmorpg's a challenge...
Turn off the monitor during fights play by just sound effects
Use your feet to control the mouse and keyboard
Take a tequila shot every time you get hit
Try to play with your dog sleeping on the keyboard
I would prefer to not get alcohol poisoning and I'd rather use the OCZ Neural Impulse Actuator over my feet (the NIA does not work very well despite its claims lol)
What about doing Heroic content in SWTOR as an operative I found it a real challenge doing the group content. See I could in stealth put humanoids to sleep and I can slice a droid. Of course it is a hard choice and you have to pick the right mobs to control like a healer or one that does heavy damage or one far away so that you do not wake it up and turn off your companion's area attacks. Then you have to kill the remaining mobs fast and often you might get a patrol mob and of course they wake from CC and you have to conserve your power for healing. You cannot reapply because you cannot restealth so only the droid can be recontrolled. Anyway I found myself real proud of managing them and I have even sometimes managed the heroic area content not completely but parts of it. I challenge myself in games like this . Of course I die a lot while I learn the mobs but that is part of the challenge. Also some mobs can see through your stealth. Some of the champion mobs have to be drawn away because they take so long to die everything else respawns and will kill you.
There's a difference between doing something and doing it well. Something I figured out in world of tanks is, it takes skill to recognize skill. The people who think it's all random and you have no control...always had the fail stats to go with it. To them the game was random, to the ones with skill, they had some control.
The same can be said for most mmos. Anyone may be able to brute force their way through the basic content but few actually know how to play the game well....which is why the games have to be as easy as thy are in the first place. If you can't adjust to when it actually becomes hard....you're the reason they dumbed it down in the first place.
There's a difference between doing something and doing it well. Something I figured out in world of tanks is, it takes skill to recognize skill. The people who think it's all random and you have no control...always had the fail stats to go with it. To them the game was random, to the ones with skill, they had some control.
The same can be said for most mmos. Anyone may be able to brute force their way through the basic content but few actually know how to play the game well....which is why the games have to be as easy as thy are in the first place. If you can't adjust to when it actually becomes hard....you're the reason they dumbed it down in the first place.
Again, when were MMOs ever hard?
I started MMOs with XI. Most of my game time was spamming LFG while doing some chores to farm gil. Apparently XI was copied off Everquest, you know, one of the MMOs that weren't supposed to be brain dead.
The problem with tanking is that it ISN'T random. It is static, it is incredibly boring. Even back in XI days when I off tanked, it wasn't very difficult. The only difference is that the margin for error was much more thin (drop aggro generally means dead healer or BLM/whoever is bursting). Regardless, successfully clearing anything heavily depended on the team's ability to coordinate with one another. There was little to no thinking if everyone understood what they were doing, if there was thinking, it was figuring out who's fault it was for the wipe.
I don't mind games being easy but I want games to have some amounts of depth. For example, Puzzle and Dragons on Android. It looks like Bewjeweled or some idiot-spawned Candy Crush game yet the mechanics behind the game provide thought-provoking team build strategies and force you to constantly match orbs based on your team's synergy. Thought-processes like this NEVER happen in MMOs and it has happened to spawn a group of delusional players like yourself thinking there is any skill involved. Even back in the vanilla WoW and XI days, I never found myself thinking to get past an encounter once the research was done.
Now stop with the ad hominem; if you're insulted that I'm calling MMOs brain dead, maybe you ought to work on your insecurities.
There is no MMORPG in existence that is not based on repetition.
So OP you'll hate them all (eventually).
So what you are looking for doesn't exist.
TSW? I chuckled at that. EvE... once you get past the learning curve, its same old repetitive gsmeplay.
Not really for EvE. EvE is extremely dynamic. I quit because it's a bit too much actually. If you're playing EvE for PvE, yeah, it becomes repetitive VERY fast. If you're playing it with a personalized objective in mind (revenge, control market here, running a corp, etc.) it actually has massive amounts of depth and is not static. The economy in EvE changes based on who's blowing who up (real players) so you need to keep up with the events. Don't get me wrong though, if somebody joins a mining corp it'll generally be boring as hell unless you get hit by random pirates everyday but that would just lead to negative profits lol
There is no MMORPG in existence that is not based on repetition.
So OP you'll hate them all (eventually).
So what you are looking for doesn't exist.
TSW? I chuckled at that. EvE... once you get past the learning curve, its same old repetitive gsmeplay.
Funny how MMOs reflect reality that way.
If Dungeon Fighter Online were still around I might recommend it as a change from the standard fair. It was something different when I was getting bored of the usual grind, but I also always liked sidescrolling beat'em'ups.
But I agree any game that you try to play for months/years is going to turn into the same old thing because as much as people complain about short singleplayer games, no one game is meant to be played forever. Eventually all games become boring. They become repetitive because after playing them enough times your brain goes on autopilot and you no longer need to think in order to succeed in them, the actions just become automated. That's how the human mind works. IT'S SCIENCE, GLORIOUS SCIENCE!
Also have to snort at the quick responses claiming that FFA PvP with full loot somehow equals not repetitive/simplistic gameplay. I suppose I should be used to it by now though, because that is that crowd's answer to everything. Have a bad game? Just add FFA PvP with full looting and it will magically become good! Want a game to not be repetitive? Just add FFA PvP with full looting and it will be like playing a new game every time you log in! Want a game to be more immersive? Just add FFA PvP with full looting and it will be like you're IN THE GAME.
Not that I have any particular beef with FFA PvP and full looting, but that statement is just ludicrous. You like FFA PvP with full loot, we get it already.
Played: DAoC, AC2, WoW, CoH, GW, GW2, WAR, AoC, Champions Online, Rift, Dragon Nest, Vindictus, Warframe, Neverwinter, Dungeon Fighter Online
have you tried world of warcraft as a non-dps role?
play a healer or better yet a tank in any raiding game and you'll move away from the brain-dead quickly.
You are joking right? I main tank in every MMO I have played. It's still a rotation with the occasional off taunt and dodge some fire. How the hell is that not brain-dead?
...oh I forgot, move boss into corner and LoS pull everything.
Yet I'm sure that like all the others who make such claims, you won't be able to link us your achievements from defeating heroic mode raid bosses in WoW.
Typical
Good lord this.
People constantly bitching about how "brain dead" WoW is but I doubt they have ever done Heroics, agh its so frustrating.
Considering only 55 guilds have done 14/14 HM SoO and its been out for months I would say that is pretty hard content, and Garrosh has been considered "easy" by most top end guilds.
Immediately jumping to "oh yeah? What about heroic mode raid bosses? Huh? Let's see your creds, man" as though it's some kind of ace card response is equally brain-dead.
Okay fine, a specific difficulty level of a specific type of content that comes at the end of the game - and that not everyone is even that interested in - is arguably challenging/difficult.
Fine.
What about everything else in the game? What about alllllll that content that's made available, across all levels, across all zones that players can go through without even ever touching raid content? Yes, it's brain-dead - by design.
You wouldn't say a restaurant has great food because they have one good item on their menu, while everything else is terrible - even if all you go there for is that one good item.
Please don't come back with some response attempting to dismiss everything else as being unimportant, as though raiding is all that matters. That wouldn't be a rebuttal. It would be attempting to dodge the point.
There is no MMORPG in existence that is not based on repetition.
So OP you'll hate them all (eventually).
So what you are looking for doesn't exist.
TSW? I chuckled at that. EvE... once you get past the learning curve, its same old repetitive gsmeplay.
Funny how MMOs reflect reality that way.
If Dungeon Fighter Online were still around I might recommend it as a change from the standard fair. It was something different when I was getting bored of the usual grind, but I also always liked sidescrolling beat'em'ups.
But I agree any game that you try to play for months/years is going to turn into the same old thing because as much as people complain about short singleplayer games, no one game is meant to be played forever. Eventually all games become boring. They become repetitive because after playing them enough times your brain goes on autopilot and you no longer need to think in order to succeed in them, the actions just become automated. That's how the human mind works. IT'S SCIENCE, GLORIOUS SCIENCE!
Also have to snort at the quick responses claiming that FFA PvP with full loot somehow equals not repetitive/simplistic gameplay. I suppose I should be used to it by now though, because that is that crowd's answer to everything. Have a bad game? Just add FFA PvP with full looting and it will magically become good! Want a game to not be repetitive? Just add FFA PvP with full looting and it will be like playing a new game every time you log in! Want a game to be more immersive? Just add FFA PvP with full looting and it will be like you're IN THE GAME.
Not that I have any particular beef with FFA PvP and full looting, but that statement is just ludicrous. You like FFA PvP with full loot, we get it already.
I actually really liked DFO =( I don't get why they closed it down. I couldn't imagine it was doing that bad. Hell, I bought stuff for it!
There's a difference between doing something and doing it well. Something I figured out in world of tanks is, it takes skill to recognize skill. The people who think it's all random and you have no control...always had the fail stats to go with it. To them the game was random, to the ones with skill, they had some control.
The same can be said for most mmos. Anyone may be able to brute force their way through the basic content but few actually know how to play the game well....which is why the games have to be as easy as thy are in the first place. If you can't adjust to when it actually becomes hard....you're the reason they dumbed it down in the first place.
Now stop with the ad hominem; if you're insulted that I'm calling MMOs brain dead, maybe you ought to work on your insecurities.
I'm not insulted, I was pointing out my own experience with people who shout the loudest about how games are easy. If that struck a nerv ....you had some good advice about that already.
I've been downloading random MMOs left and right and am getting bored of them. Recently Mafia (StarCraft 2) and Gran Turismo 6 have heavily caught my attention but I miss RPGs. It was then I realized I actually enjoy having to constantly think (or in GT6's case, memorize + think).
MMOs often devolve into button mashing or straight up muscle memory. Final Fantasy XIV attempted to deviate from this but when you fight the same boss 10 times there isn't a whole lot of thinking involved; you cannot, however, say the same about Gran Turismo 6 despite having run the same track hundreds of times.
I've though thought about going back into EvE Online...but besides that, is there anything else that isn't brain dead? I'd even consider EvE fairly brain dead if you're just PvE-ing for money.
So you're comparing PvP games (SC2 and GT6) to PvE games, and asking why PvE is not like PvP?
Or you're talking about the PvE features of said games (competing against the computer), in which case GT6 is just as brain dead as MMO's are. Memorize the tracks, choose the best settings -> win.
Either way this makes no sense.
I don't play SC2 competitively anymore. While Mafia is defined as "PvP", it is slow and requires quite a bit of thinking to not kill your own team.
I never play online with GT6. Judging by your tone you actually have no clue what you're talking about. Memorizing the tracks themselves takes MUCH longer than any MMO instance I've played. Laguna Seca/MazdaSpeedWay's corkscrew, for example, is tackled differently based on the car you have. When you get into monstrous tracks like "The Ring", which I still don't have memorized, the elevation differences generally occur throughout the apex/exit of a corner. It doesn't matter what car you have because if you're hitting those corners at 200km/h+ and you use the wrong line (which I still do), you'll wipe out. I will admit I am heavily biased towards motorsports as I race in real life. Please do not compare a sport that has been around before you were born to a genre of games that will never be considered a real sport.
To be perfectly clear I never claimed that motorsports are inferior or equal to that of MMO PvE. But the fact is that motorsports are a real sports only when you compete against other humans (PvP). There is nothing challenging about taking on a computer and if you want to tell me that racing against a computer is considered real sport allow me to laugh.
Challenge may come from getting fastest times on a lap or race but in reality if you aren't competing against humans it has as much value as trying to beat a PvE opponent in MMO as fast as possible or with less members than optimal or whatever. You can always artificially add challenge. But having to memorize 15 turns and the right lines on a curve sounds incredibly challenging and not at all braindead.
If you want to compare "real motorsports" to MMO's then at least be consistent. GT6 PvP vs. MMO PvP or GT6 PvE (watered down version of a real motorsport) vs. MMO PvE.
Using LOL is like saying "my argument sucks but I still want to disagree".
You're right, if somebody is going to slam the gas into walls using a grossly overpowered car vs AI, forgetting about every corner or making clean laps, yeah it's completely brain dead and it's what I used to do as a kid.
I guess what's what MMOs are lacking, depth. It's kinda like today's FPS versus Counter-Strike, the skill ceiling is so low compared to CS:GO. I don't think there is anything wrong with making games easy because it caters to the general population and those who don't want to think; but for those of us that do want to think and play hard, why is there no reward for it?
Most of the not brain dead mmo's I've tried I wouldn't consider paying for tbh. That said other than eve there's perpetuum, a sort of eve clone with robots rather than ships. Warframe is quite decent(and since free can be played along with eve or whatever) if you aren't just in a zerg group. Uncharted waters apparently got a 'big' update, but not sure what that'll offer.
Albiona and the repopulation should launch soon btw.
You might try Dark Souls. It's not exactly an MMO and as far as I can tell, there isn't a larger economic system. But there are some online Co-Op components to it that are pretty interesting. It is an Action RPG which focuses on tension and skillful patience as opposed to breakneck twitch reaction.
There is a common myth that the game is incredibly hard. This is not completely true. Yes, the game punishes you for being careless. And it can be totally unnerving to explore an area you haven't be in before. But the game is not "hard" in the sense that it is unfair. It merely punishes you for playing incorrectly. If you play correctly, take your time, get to understand the mechanics... the game is just down-right fun and rewarding.
I wish I could recommend a proper MMO for you, but I just can't. They're all the same to me. Some are better than others in execution, but fundamentally, they are following the same design ethos - which I particularly dislike.
Comments
^^THIS^^ A thousand times ^^THIS^^
What happens when you log off your characters????.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFQhfhnjYMk
Dark Age of Camelot
It many not be a MMO, but Path of Exile may get your interest.
It requires you to think a lot, and on the fly, fast or it can have huge concequences.
I have played the game 2k+ hours and I still enjoy it. Right now I am taking a break before the next league starts (4months of new leagues with special additions each time - kind of D2 ladder resets but with a twist)
The game is basicly what D3 should have been - and more. It is highly complicated, engaging and fun at all times imo.
Atleast try it out. It is completely free to play, the only thing not being cosmetic in the shop is stash tabs (and you can create other chars or use your default 4 if thats what you want)
Other than that as others has suggested TSW (The Secret World) is my best suggestion other than PoE. It requires you to think, hell I used several days to just complete one quest, since it was that hard.
Depends what kind of person you are.
If you think EVE is "follow the leader, press F1 and F2 when he shouts on comms" then you are one of the 80% of nullsec scrubs that think this game is all about 1 leader shouting commands and the player following it.
EVE can be so much more, as long as you don't take the easy way.
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"
Then you should be playing a singleplayer game. Or the game should have been a singleplayer game.
Instead it launched with a monthly fee. There's a very good reason it crashed and burned and made Funcom swear off MMOs.
Instancing is NEVER a good solution in MMOs. If your game needs instancing to function, there was probably a better genre it could have been developed in.
As for WoW being challenging.. maybe if that's the only MMO you've ever played? But WoW was the most casual MMO on the market when it launched, and still is. You can take a simple game and have a lot of competition in it, but at the end of the day, it's a very simple game, with simple challenges. Even tanking in WoW is a hell of a lot easier than tanking in a game like DAoC. And you have so many third party add ons to help.
Here's a few options to make mmorpg's a challenge...
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
-- Herman Melville
I don't play SC2 competitively anymore. While Mafia is defined as "PvP", it is slow and requires quite a bit of thinking to not kill your own team.
I never play online with GT6. Judging by your tone you actually have no clue what you're talking about. Memorizing the tracks themselves takes MUCH longer than any MMO instance I've played. Laguna Seca/MazdaSpeedWay's corkscrew, for example, is tackled differently based on the car you have. When you get into monstrous tracks like "The Ring", which I still don't have memorized, the elevation differences generally occur throughout the apex/exit of a corner. It doesn't matter what car you have because if you're hitting those corners at 200km/h+ and you use the wrong line (which I still do), you'll wipe out. I will admit I am heavily biased towards motorsports as I race in real life. Please do not compare a sport that has been around before you were born to a genre of games that will never be considered a real sport.
Back when I was a fat high school kid in grade 11, World of Warcraft launched and I spent my Friday nights rotting on vent with 39 other people. Waiting generally took longer than actually clearing any raids. I'm not in the state of life where I can dedicate hours to video games for the sake of getting a shiny item. I admit I have only done LFR and LFD stuff but I'm not about to backwards in life progression for a leisure hobby nor do I enjoy the elitism that generally occurs with players that participate in such things.
Do you want to tell your friends you cleared 14/14 HM SoO (I have no clue what it is) or show them a video of sparks flying off your knee pucks as you knee drag through an S bend at 170+km/h? I still have fun in video games...but it sure as hell won't be fun if ppl start comparing e-peen sizes based on their gear.
And with all the ppl that told me Secret World, thanks. Downloading now =D
What about doing Heroic content in SWTOR as an operative I found it a real challenge doing the group content. See I could in stealth put humanoids to sleep and I can slice a droid. Of course it is a hard choice and you have to pick the right mobs to control like a healer or one that does heavy damage or one far away so that you do not wake it up and turn off your companion's area attacks. Then you have to kill the remaining mobs fast and often you might get a patrol mob and of course they wake from CC and you have to conserve your power for healing. You cannot reapply because you cannot restealth so only the droid can be recontrolled. Anyway I found myself real proud of managing them and I have even sometimes managed the heroic area content not completely but parts of it. I challenge myself in games like this . Of course I die a lot while I learn the mobs but that is part of the challenge. Also some mobs can see through your stealth. Some of the champion mobs have to be drawn away because they take so long to die everything else respawns and will kill you.
There's a difference between doing something and doing it well. Something I figured out in world of tanks is, it takes skill to recognize skill. The people who think it's all random and you have no control...always had the fail stats to go with it. To them the game was random, to the ones with skill, they had some control.
The same can be said for most mmos. Anyone may be able to brute force their way through the basic content but few actually know how to play the game well....which is why the games have to be as easy as thy are in the first place. If you can't adjust to when it actually becomes hard....you're the reason they dumbed it down in the first place.
Again, when were MMOs ever hard?
I started MMOs with XI. Most of my game time was spamming LFG while doing some chores to farm gil. Apparently XI was copied off Everquest, you know, one of the MMOs that weren't supposed to be brain dead.
The problem with tanking is that it ISN'T random. It is static, it is incredibly boring. Even back in XI days when I off tanked, it wasn't very difficult. The only difference is that the margin for error was much more thin (drop aggro generally means dead healer or BLM/whoever is bursting). Regardless, successfully clearing anything heavily depended on the team's ability to coordinate with one another. There was little to no thinking if everyone understood what they were doing, if there was thinking, it was figuring out who's fault it was for the wipe.
I don't mind games being easy but I want games to have some amounts of depth. For example, Puzzle and Dragons on Android. It looks like Bewjeweled or some idiot-spawned Candy Crush game yet the mechanics behind the game provide thought-provoking team build strategies and force you to constantly match orbs based on your team's synergy. Thought-processes like this NEVER happen in MMOs and it has happened to spawn a group of delusional players like yourself thinking there is any skill involved. Even back in the vanilla WoW and XI days, I never found myself thinking to get past an encounter once the research was done.
Now stop with the ad hominem; if you're insulted that I'm calling MMOs brain dead, maybe you ought to work on your insecurities.
Not really for EvE. EvE is extremely dynamic. I quit because it's a bit too much actually. If you're playing EvE for PvE, yeah, it becomes repetitive VERY fast. If you're playing it with a personalized objective in mind (revenge, control market here, running a corp, etc.) it actually has massive amounts of depth and is not static. The economy in EvE changes based on who's blowing who up (real players) so you need to keep up with the events. Don't get me wrong though, if somebody joins a mining corp it'll generally be boring as hell unless you get hit by random pirates everyday but that would just lead to negative profits lol
Funny how MMOs reflect reality that way.
If Dungeon Fighter Online were still around I might recommend it as a change from the standard fair. It was something different when I was getting bored of the usual grind, but I also always liked sidescrolling beat'em'ups.
But I agree any game that you try to play for months/years is going to turn into the same old thing because as much as people complain about short singleplayer games, no one game is meant to be played forever. Eventually all games become boring. They become repetitive because after playing them enough times your brain goes on autopilot and you no longer need to think in order to succeed in them, the actions just become automated. That's how the human mind works. IT'S SCIENCE, GLORIOUS SCIENCE!
Also have to snort at the quick responses claiming that FFA PvP with full loot somehow equals not repetitive/simplistic gameplay. I suppose I should be used to it by now though, because that is that crowd's answer to everything. Have a bad game? Just add FFA PvP with full looting and it will magically become good! Want a game to not be repetitive? Just add FFA PvP with full looting and it will be like playing a new game every time you log in! Want a game to be more immersive? Just add FFA PvP with full looting and it will be like you're IN THE GAME.
Not that I have any particular beef with FFA PvP and full looting, but that statement is just ludicrous. You like FFA PvP with full loot, we get it already.
Played: DAoC, AC2, WoW, CoH, GW, GW2, WAR, AoC, Champions Online, Rift, Dragon Nest, Vindictus, Warframe, Neverwinter, Dungeon Fighter Online
Currently Playing: Dungeon Fighter Online Global
Waiting for: None
Immediately jumping to "oh yeah? What about heroic mode raid bosses? Huh? Let's see your creds, man" as though it's some kind of ace card response is equally brain-dead.
Okay fine, a specific difficulty level of a specific type of content that comes at the end of the game - and that not everyone is even that interested in - is arguably challenging/difficult.
Fine.
What about everything else in the game? What about alllllll that content that's made available, across all levels, across all zones that players can go through without even ever touching raid content? Yes, it's brain-dead - by design.
You wouldn't say a restaurant has great food because they have one good item on their menu, while everything else is terrible - even if all you go there for is that one good item.
Please don't come back with some response attempting to dismiss everything else as being unimportant, as though raiding is all that matters. That wouldn't be a rebuttal. It would be attempting to dodge the point.
I actually really liked DFO =( I don't get why they closed it down. I couldn't imagine it was doing that bad. Hell, I bought stuff for it!
they only closed the western version. It's still the number 3 moneymaking f2p game in the world...even after failing here
I'm not insulted, I was pointing out my own experience with people who shout the loudest about how games are easy. If that struck a nerv ....you had some good advice about that already.
^I'm countering your point of stating "MMOs are hard"; no they aren't, they never were.
I do, however, wish they all had more depth to them.
To be perfectly clear I never claimed that motorsports are inferior or equal to that of MMO PvE. But the fact is that motorsports are a real sports only when you compete against other humans (PvP). There is nothing challenging about taking on a computer and if you want to tell me that racing against a computer is considered real sport allow me to laugh.
Challenge may come from getting fastest times on a lap or race but in reality if you aren't competing against humans it has as much value as trying to beat a PvE opponent in MMO as fast as possible or with less members than optimal or whatever. You can always artificially add challenge. But having to memorize 15 turns and the right lines on a curve sounds incredibly challenging and not at all braindead.
If you want to compare "real motorsports" to MMO's then at least be consistent. GT6 PvP vs. MMO PvP or GT6 PvE (watered down version of a real motorsport) vs. MMO PvE.
^
You're right, if somebody is going to slam the gas into walls using a grossly overpowered car vs AI, forgetting about every corner or making clean laps, yeah it's completely brain dead and it's what I used to do as a kid.
I guess what's what MMOs are lacking, depth. It's kinda like today's FPS versus Counter-Strike, the skill ceiling is so low compared to CS:GO. I don't think there is anything wrong with making games easy because it caters to the general population and those who don't want to think; but for those of us that do want to think and play hard, why is there no reward for it?
Most of the not brain dead mmo's I've tried I wouldn't consider paying for tbh. That said other than eve there's perpetuum, a sort of eve clone with robots rather than ships. Warframe is quite decent(and since free can be played along with eve or whatever) if you aren't just in a zerg group. Uncharted waters apparently got a 'big' update, but not sure what that'll offer.
Albiona and the repopulation should launch soon btw.
You might try Dark Souls. It's not exactly an MMO and as far as I can tell, there isn't a larger economic system. But there are some online Co-Op components to it that are pretty interesting. It is an Action RPG which focuses on tension and skillful patience as opposed to breakneck twitch reaction.
There is a common myth that the game is incredibly hard. This is not completely true. Yes, the game punishes you for being careless. And it can be totally unnerving to explore an area you haven't be in before. But the game is not "hard" in the sense that it is unfair. It merely punishes you for playing incorrectly. If you play correctly, take your time, get to understand the mechanics... the game is just down-right fun and rewarding.
I wish I could recommend a proper MMO for you, but I just can't. They're all the same to me. Some are better than others in execution, but fundamentally, they are following the same design ethos - which I particularly dislike.
Where exactly did I say they were hard ? You can still demonstrate a lack of skill on things that are easy....like reading for instance.