Why do I need proof. I was there during the days of Ultima Online, Everquest, and the start of World of Warcraft. In Everquest I don't think I even knew quests existed. I know they were too challenging for me in most cases. I was pretty amazed by people who were able to complete them. It required great patience and the ability to follow directions.
Because you are making a claim. It is your opinion that people cannot follow directions. You have no data or evidence to support that.
And patience .. really .. in games? I will first to admit that i have no patience in games, and that is my preference. Why do i need to waste any time waiting in the middle of my entertainment?
Yes I think patience is a challenge in games. It's probably more of a challenge then being able to figure out how to kill some mobs that were designed to be easily defeated in most cases.
People who play just to level up, quickly progress, and kill things are missing the point of why they were created in the first place.
They are just entertainment. There is no "point" beyond what the individual players like to have fun.
In fact, you can say "level up, quickly progress, and kill things" is the "point" for many of ARPGs .. which is what MMOs are becoming.
Well, we're now getting into the ageless MMORPG's were meant to be virtual worlds vs the opposing view, MMO's are just games to be played.
Depending on what a person is looking for determines where they stand on their game play.
As you have correctly pointed out previously, there are far more people who are just looking to play a good game, and have no interest in living in a virtual world and most major developers are catering to them because that's where the big money is. Can't fault them for that.
Not saying I like this, I"m a virtual world first guy as you well know, but I can accept the reality of the situation. (well, and keep playing EVE fortunately)
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"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
People who play just to level up, quickly progress, and kill things are missing the point of why they were created in the first place.
They are just entertainment. There is no "point" beyond what the individual players like to have fun.
In fact, you can say "level up, quickly progress, and kill things" is the "point" for many of ARPGs .. which is what MMOs are becoming.
My point is that was not the original point. It' why they have taken a down swing in recent years. They have gone from being restaurants to being like fast food joints.
Any monkey can follow a GPS. Not everyone can navigate without one. Send someone to sea and tell them to navigate by the stars. Most people wouldn't be able to do it. This is not at all a "menial task". It is one that requires some actual thinking. Something most people don't want to do in game.
What is the content that people are interested in? The content is following GPS like a mindless zombie clicking on Exclamation marks or doing the same dungeon over and over again to get the right loot?
For those who keep saying death penalty isn't a challenge, but continuously repeating the same task with no consequence for failing is some great and challenging feat I don't know what to say to you. It's obvious that being able to repeatedly die with no death penalty until you get lucky and win is not a real challenge at all. Having to "execute" at a "high level" of "success" in "combat" is.
I find it disheartening that people want to belittle the things they are probably not able to accomplish in games so that they can disregard them as menial tasks. The truth is people just don't want any real challenge.
If a game let me navigate by the stars then you would actually have a point. However, most "locate X" quests boil down to two versions:
-"he item is located under a rock and that's all the game tells you - essentially a mindless search where you hope you get lucky and do not have to search under every rock in the zone
-find this place that everyone of the locals knows and can give you directions to if only the game let you
These types of quests are menial and insulting to my intelligence. Give me proper "treasure hunting" quests and I will gladly ditch the GPS. Otherwise most of these quests tend to assume that either you are clairvoilant or a drooling idiot.
What games are you playing where you are "able to repeatedly die with no death penalty until you get lucky and win"? Would you rather play properly designed games like World Of Warcraft where stuff like that does not happen? I can see you being frustrated playing completely luck based games. Don't you want a real challenge?
We could probably find some evidence that, in the same game, the less intelligent players spend more money (thus speaking louder with it) and the more intelligent players spend less money.
I want to help design and develop a PvE-focused, solo-friendly, sandpark MMO which combines crafting, monster hunting, and story. So PM me if you are starting one.
Adding "normal" activities I would actually need to do in a virtual world, which I want my MMO to be, increases the quality of world to me. What you consider conveniences are to me world killing features that I don't want in a MMO in the first place.
....
Example: Instances. I find them immersion killers big time. If I have the choice in a MMO to do open world content, or open "dungeon" like old Darkness Falls in original DAoC, I will always go with that rather than an Instance.
Example: I prefer what some would call "tedious and mind-numbing" crafting of Wurm Online much more than crafting in other MMOs, even more than even SWG's old crafting system.
To me these convenience features are "normal" activities. Many of the things MMORPGs ask us to do are unrealistic and in a 'sane' virtual world people would have found shortcuts for them.
An overcrowded open world dungeon is way more immersion breaking to me than an instanced one. If the dungeon is so popular than it should have been stripped of all the loot and danger ages ago.
While I love detailed crafting with customization, most of the crafting in MMORPGs is not of that sort. If I had to perform those task in actual life, I would have found a way to either automate them or streamline the heck out of the process. SWG was a big culprit for me in that respect. The game had really great customization crafting options but the actual process of leveling crafting was a mindnumbing grind of making the same low quality item over and over until your xp bar filled up. That was extremely immersion breaking since in a futuristic setting those tasks would be automated (especially in such a droid heavy setting like SW). The game should have had you level by doing unique customization tasks but instead it went for menial repetition. The inconvenient task was the abnormal one.
Ask 100 people what they want and you'll probably get 100 different answers. Now take this wish list and compile it into concrete specifications. Take these specifications and implement them as software.
Now let those 100 people evaluate the result...
Don't forget that with MMOs you'll have as well lots of people demanding features. Keep in mind that when some of the requested features get implemented, some of the requesters may no longer be around.
Any monkey can follow a GPS. Not everyone can navigate without one. Send someone to sea and tell them to navigate by the stars. Most people wouldn't be able to do it. This is not at all a "menial task". It is one that requires some actual thinking. Something most people don't want to do in game.
What is the content that people are interested in? The content is following GPS like a mindless zombie clicking on Exclamation marks or doing the same dungeon over and over again to get the right loot?
For those who keep saying death penalty isn't a challenge, but continuously repeating the same task with no consequence for failing is some great and challenging feat I don't know what to say to you. It's obvious that being able to repeatedly die with no death penalty until you get lucky and win is not a real challenge at all. Having to "execute" at a "high level" of "success" in "combat" is.
I find it disheartening that people want to belittle the things they are probably not able to accomplish in games so that they can disregard them as menial tasks. The truth is people just don't want any real challenge.
If a game let me navigate by the stars then you would actually have a point. However, most "locate X" quests boil down to two versions:
-"he item is located under a rock and that's all the game tells you - essentially a mindless search where you hope you get lucky and do not have to search under every rock in the zone
-find this place that everyone of the locals knows and can give you directions to if only the game let you
These types of quests are menial and insulting to my intelligence. Give me proper "treasure hunting" quests and I will gladly ditch the GPS. Otherwise most of these quests tend to assume that either you are clairvoilant or a drooling idiot.
What games are you playing where you are "able to repeatedly die with no death penalty until you get lucky and win"? Would you rather play properly designed games like World Of Warcraft where stuff like that does not happen? I can see you being frustrated playing completely luck based games. Don't you want a real challenge?
In World of Warcraft (pre GPS) quests were fairly descriptive in where to go. Still people had trouble with finding things. That's why they put the GPS there in the first place.
I believe it is a real challenge. Having to improve your skill level to a certain point in order to progress your character is a challenge. For instance if you have to succeed say 80% of the time in fights without dying to progress further would be a challenge. Right now you can progress in a game by failing 80% if you want. The failure rate is probably not nearly that high though because fights are generally set up for you to easily win through most of the leveling process.
In World of Warcraft (pre GPS) quests were fairly descriptive in where to go. Still people had trouble with finding things. That's why they put the GPS there in the first place.
I believe it is a real challenge. Having to improve your skill level to a certain point in order to progress your character is a challenge. For instance if you have to succeed say 80% of the time in fights without dying to progress further would be a challenge. Right now you can progress in a game by failing 80% if you want. The failure rate is probably not nearly that high though because fights are generally set up for you to easily win through most of the leveling process.
WoW had a few "not giving you any real directions" quests but most were of the "glaringly obvious" category so no real challenge either way.
The problem with your approach is that we do not real approach life like that for most skill testing tasks. If I win an Olympic medal people will not consider it a lesser achievement because I failed to win in the previous two Olympics (66% failure rate). In fact you are lauding for overcoming your failures and improving your skill to the level where you finally achieved your goal. We honour people who achieve difficult things on the first try but also honor people who overcame past failures and can now overcome what stopped them from progressing before.
This shows up even in your example. If you achieve your goal of "you have to succeed say 80% of the time in fights without dying to progress", are you going to stop teh person from progressing just because last week they only had a 60% "not dying" statistic?
In World of Warcraft (pre GPS) quests were fairly descriptive in where to go. Still people had trouble with finding things. That's why they put the GPS there in the first place.
I believe it is a real challenge. Having to improve your skill level to a certain point in order to progress your character is a challenge. For instance if you have to succeed say 80% of the time in fights without dying to progress further would be a challenge. Right now you can progress in a game by failing 80% if you want. The failure rate is probably not nearly that high though because fights are generally set up for you to easily win through most of the leveling process.
WoW had a few "not giving you any real directions" quests but most were of the "glaringly obvious" category so no real challenge either way.
The problem with your approach is that we do not real approach life like that for most skill testing tasks. If I win an Olympic medal people will not consider it a lesser achievement because I failed to win in the previous two Olympics (66% failure rate). In fact you are lauding for overcoming your failures and improving your skill to the level where you finally achieved your goal. We honour people who achieve difficult things on the first try but also honor people who overcame past failures and can now overcome what stopped them from progressing before.
This shows up even in your example. If you achieve your goal of "you have to succeed say 80% of the time in fights without dying to progress", are you going to stop teh person from progressing just because last week they only had a 60% "not dying" statistic?
I would argue that there is no achievement if it's so easy everyone can do it. In the case of MMOs today everyone can do it because it is designed that way. Having no death penalty (which is more of a game rule to increase difficulty) is what makes said achievement worth while. In your examples of achievement the people who achieved those takes were very few. In games like Everquest there were not a lot of people who made it to max level, even less that finished any meaningful quest, and even very few who raided or got raid loot. That is not the case in MMOs today. I wonder if people who say that certain tasks in MMOs are simply tedious would say the same thing about the training to become an olympic athlete. Most of the training to become an olympic athlete requires time, patience, and a lot of repeating the same boring things over and over again.
In terms of the maps I'd love to see an experiment. Have an MMO without maps and GPS. Have someone right very detailed instructions on how to get to said location. Lets see how many people can navigate to said location on the map. I bet most people couldn't even follow coordinates on a map. If I recall WoW had map coordinates. There was some kind of command to display them. It still wasn't even enough for most people to find the location.
Originally posted by VengeSunsoar Oh they could follow the map easily enough. Very few would read the quest though.
Lol
Well that's an even better reason not to have a GPS. I know in games/MMOs these days I often will just click on the quest giver, follow the arrow, and then follow the arrow back to the quest giver and repeat. To me that is neither a challenge or is more fun then trying to find something. What is the point of having quest text if there is no need to read it? You might was well just skip it and follow the arrow around all day (not very fun)(then again maybe fun for some people lol).
After reading a text from a developer (dont remember well, i think was the Trion's boss) and observing the behavior of people in foruns and ingame, i came to conclusion that what people says they want in a mmo (in foruns) isn't necessarily what they do and seek when really playing (and paying) the game. As a example, the big majority of people in foruns like this says that wants sandboxes features, freedom, absency of hand holding, without instances and so on. However, when they are ingame, they seek these very things. In the heat of the moment, they seek more "convenience" (dumbed down features, making things easier to obtain) and feel lost without hand helding, saying the game has "nothing more to do" and even missing instanced content.
I think because this the big developers dont gamble much money in full sandboxes and, when they do, they try "fix" the things later adding more themepark features and "convenience" (making things easier) to the game, as Archeage shows.
I have no idea what you actually read. But it's 100% true. And not just for MMOs.
Gamers are notoriously one of the most paradoxically conservative consumer bases in the world currently. Most of us will loudly proclaim we want change. We want newer features, less of the same, more interesting & complex gameplay. When a game like that comes out, we scrutinize it. Criticize it for the very things we asked for, using different termonology. For example, like you say, we ask for more freedom. However, if the game doesn't have direction (aka limits our freedom to predefined choices), we complain that there is 'nothing to do' in the game, or that it's 'boring'.
We also ask for things like 'wanting what we do to affect the world', and then when we get that many complain 'well i don't feel special or heroic', because they are now one of thousands doing the same thing.
And on top of this, we often don't truly support smaller projects. It's these smaller projects that ultimately drive change, as they can afford more risks. However, smaller projects typically have less polish, which is something many gamers refuse to compensate for. They want the most simplistic, accessible, refined version of a game possible. Which naturally translates into a game that takes few risks (because it can't, given the amount of money required to fund the game).
It's a sad thing to learn, but it's been like this for over a decade now. It's an unfortunate aspect of human nature that doesn't really show signs of changing any time soon.
Originally posted by Flyte27I would argue that there is no achievement if it's so easy everyone can do it.
I don't see how it would even effect you that other players are failing at some in-game goal. Normally, you aren't going to be there to see them fail, and you probably won't even hear them talking about failing in some chat channel or forum. So how do you get any benefit out of others failure (which it's probably safe to assume made them unhappy)?
I want to help design and develop a PvE-focused, solo-friendly, sandpark MMO which combines crafting, monster hunting, and story. So PM me if you are starting one.
Originally posted by Flyte27I would argue that there is no achievement if it's so easy everyone can do it.
I don't see how it would even effect you that other players are failing at some in-game goal. Normally, you aren't going to be there to see them fail, and you probably won't even hear them talking about failing in some chat channel or forum. So how do you get any benefit out of others failure (which it's probably safe to assume made them unhappy)?
You only quoted a part of what I wrote, but the point is that there is no achievement if everyone can do it. It basically says it right there. The point is that in order for something to be worthwhile it can't be achieved by everyone. If everyone can do it then there is no value to being able to do it. Being that it's an MMO and lots of people are (hopefully) playing together in a world where they can see each other and interact with each other (that is the point of playing in an MMO). If you just wanted to have fun solo there are better single player games. If you want to have fun with a friend there are better coop games. If you want to live in a world with other people that is realistic you play an MMORPG IMO.
My point is that was not the original point. It' why they have taken a down swing in recent years. They have gone from being restaurants to being like fast food joints.
"Going down" is your opinion because that is not what you like.
To me, they are going up to be better games, cutting out the tedious parts, and focusing on the fun.
They have gone from mom-and-pop run-down burger joints to chain steak houses.
Originally posted by VengeSunsoar Oh they could follow the map easily enough. Very few would read the quest though.
Lol
Well that's an even better reason not to have a GPS. I know in games/MMOs these days I often will just click on the quest giver, follow the arrow, and then follow the arrow back to the quest giver and repeat. To me that is neither a challenge or is more fun then trying to find something. What is the point of having quest text if there is no need to read it? You might was well just skip it and follow the arrow around all day (not very fun)(then again maybe fun for some people lol).
Yes, the better design for those who are tired of running around is to skip it .. just port to the dungeon and have fun in combat.
The following the arrow (or plain looking for stuff in the wilderness) quests are not fun to me. That is why i don't like Skyrim, too much running around empty wilderness.
Originally posted by Flyte27I would argue that there is no achievement if it's so easy everyone can do it.
I don't see how it would even effect you that other players are failing at some in-game goal. Normally, you aren't going to be there to see them fail, and you probably won't even hear them talking about failing in some chat channel or forum. So how do you get any benefit out of others failure (which it's probably safe to assume made them unhappy)?
You only quoted a part of what I wrote, but the point is that there is no achievement if everyone can do it. It basically says it right there. The point is that in order for something to be worthwhile it can't be achieved by everyone. If everyone can do it then there is no value to being able to do it. Being that it's an MMO and lots of people are (hopefully) playing together in a world where they can see each other and interact with each other (that is the point of playing in an MMO). If you just wanted to have fun solo there are better single player games. If you want to have fun with a friend there are better coop games. If you want to live in a world with other people that is realistic you play an MMORPG IMO.
I understood that you feel that something being done by everyone makes it uncool or unspecial somehow. I don't feel that way but I've heard the sentiment expressed before so I'm aware that some people do feel this way. What I'm asking is, by what method(s) within a game are you finding out that other people aren't accomplishing something? Because I was thinking that an MMO which was designed to have some tasks that only, say 50% of players could accomplish, would also have to have some method to communicate to all players that this task is one people are failing at regularly, so players who feel the way you do would be motivated to tackle that particular task.
I want to help design and develop a PvE-focused, solo-friendly, sandpark MMO which combines crafting, monster hunting, and story. So PM me if you are starting one.
Ask 100 people what they want and you'll probably get 100 different answers. Now take this wish list and compile it into concrete specifications. Take these specifications and implement them as software.
Now let those 100 people evaluate the result...
This would be cool if you would actually do it. It would be cool even if the 100 ideas were just written up as designs, which would be significantly cheaper and faster than implementing them even as minimal demos. But the difficult part would be getting people to look at the designs and make comments comparing them. It would be like when they give out awards for novels - in order to vote fairly you have to read 8 or 10 novels, and it's quite difficult to get someone to do that. MMO design descriptions would be shorter than novels, but there would be a lot more. Maybe the designs could be done in sections that were a paragraph or two long, and readers could narrow down the pool of designs each time they voted "dislike" on a section...
I want to help design and develop a PvE-focused, solo-friendly, sandpark MMO which combines crafting, monster hunting, and story. So PM me if you are starting one.
Comments
Yes I think patience is a challenge in games. It's probably more of a challenge then being able to figure out how to kill some mobs that were designed to be easily defeated in most cases.
Well, we're now getting into the ageless MMORPG's were meant to be virtual worlds vs the opposing view, MMO's are just games to be played.
Depending on what a person is looking for determines where they stand on their game play.
As you have correctly pointed out previously, there are far more people who are just looking to play a good game, and have no interest in living in a virtual world and most major developers are catering to them because that's where the big money is. Can't fault them for that.
Not saying I like this, I"m a virtual world first guy as you well know, but I can accept the reality of the situation. (well, and keep playing EVE fortunately)
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"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
My point is that was not the original point. It' why they have taken a down swing in recent years. They have gone from being restaurants to being like fast food joints.
If a game let me navigate by the stars then you would actually have a point. However, most "locate X" quests boil down to two versions:
-"he item is located under a rock and that's all the game tells you - essentially a mindless search where you hope you get lucky and do not have to search under every rock in the zone
-find this place that everyone of the locals knows and can give you directions to if only the game let you
These types of quests are menial and insulting to my intelligence. Give me proper "treasure hunting" quests and I will gladly ditch the GPS. Otherwise most of these quests tend to assume that either you are clairvoilant or a drooling idiot.
What games are you playing where you are "able to repeatedly die with no death penalty until you get lucky and win"? Would you rather play properly designed games like World Of Warcraft where stuff like that does not happen? I can see you being frustrated playing completely luck based games. Don't you want a real challenge?
To me these convenience features are "normal" activities. Many of the things MMORPGs ask us to do are unrealistic and in a 'sane' virtual world people would have found shortcuts for them.
An overcrowded open world dungeon is way more immersion breaking to me than an instanced one. If the dungeon is so popular than it should have been stripped of all the loot and danger ages ago.
While I love detailed crafting with customization, most of the crafting in MMORPGs is not of that sort. If I had to perform those task in actual life, I would have found a way to either automate them or streamline the heck out of the process. SWG was a big culprit for me in that respect. The game had really great customization crafting options but the actual process of leveling crafting was a mindnumbing grind of making the same low quality item over and over until your xp bar filled up. That was extremely immersion breaking since in a futuristic setting those tasks would be automated (especially in such a droid heavy setting like SW). The game should have had you level by doing unique customization tasks but instead it went for menial repetition. The inconvenient task was the abnormal one.
This is no issue of MMOs alone.
Ask 100 people what they want and you'll probably get 100 different answers. Now take this wish list and compile it into concrete specifications. Take these specifications and implement them as software.
Now let those 100 people evaluate the result...
Don't forget that with MMOs you'll have as well lots of people demanding features. Keep in mind that when some of the requested features get implemented, some of the requesters may no longer be around.
In World of Warcraft (pre GPS) quests were fairly descriptive in where to go. Still people had trouble with finding things. That's why they put the GPS there in the first place.
I believe it is a real challenge. Having to improve your skill level to a certain point in order to progress your character is a challenge. For instance if you have to succeed say 80% of the time in fights without dying to progress further would be a challenge. Right now you can progress in a game by failing 80% if you want. The failure rate is probably not nearly that high though because fights are generally set up for you to easily win through most of the leveling process.
WoW had a few "not giving you any real directions" quests but most were of the "glaringly obvious" category so no real challenge either way.
The problem with your approach is that we do not real approach life like that for most skill testing tasks. If I win an Olympic medal people will not consider it a lesser achievement because I failed to win in the previous two Olympics (66% failure rate). In fact you are lauding for overcoming your failures and improving your skill to the level where you finally achieved your goal. We honour people who achieve difficult things on the first try but also honor people who overcame past failures and can now overcome what stopped them from progressing before.
This shows up even in your example. If you achieve your goal of "you have to succeed say 80% of the time in fights without dying to progress", are you going to stop teh person from progressing just because last week they only had a 60% "not dying" statistic?
I would argue that there is no achievement if it's so easy everyone can do it. In the case of MMOs today everyone can do it because it is designed that way. Having no death penalty (which is more of a game rule to increase difficulty) is what makes said achievement worth while. In your examples of achievement the people who achieved those takes were very few. In games like Everquest there were not a lot of people who made it to max level, even less that finished any meaningful quest, and even very few who raided or got raid loot. That is not the case in MMOs today. I wonder if people who say that certain tasks in MMOs are simply tedious would say the same thing about the training to become an olympic athlete. Most of the training to become an olympic athlete requires time, patience, and a lot of repeating the same boring things over and over again.
In terms of the maps I'd love to see an experiment. Have an MMO without maps and GPS. Have someone right very detailed instructions on how to get to said location. Lets see how many people can navigate to said location on the map. I bet most people couldn't even follow coordinates on a map. If I recall WoW had map coordinates. There was some kind of command to display them. It still wasn't even enough for most people to find the location.
Lol
Well that's an even better reason not to have a GPS. I know in games/MMOs these days I often will just click on the quest giver, follow the arrow, and then follow the arrow back to the quest giver and repeat. To me that is neither a challenge or is more fun then trying to find something. What is the point of having quest text if there is no need to read it? You might was well just skip it and follow the arrow around all day (not very fun)(then again maybe fun for some people lol).
I have no idea what you actually read. But it's 100% true. And not just for MMOs.
Gamers are notoriously one of the most paradoxically conservative consumer bases in the world currently. Most of us will loudly proclaim we want change. We want newer features, less of the same, more interesting & complex gameplay. When a game like that comes out, we scrutinize it. Criticize it for the very things we asked for, using different termonology. For example, like you say, we ask for more freedom. However, if the game doesn't have direction (aka limits our freedom to predefined choices), we complain that there is 'nothing to do' in the game, or that it's 'boring'.
We also ask for things like 'wanting what we do to affect the world', and then when we get that many complain 'well i don't feel special or heroic', because they are now one of thousands doing the same thing.
And on top of this, we often don't truly support smaller projects. It's these smaller projects that ultimately drive change, as they can afford more risks. However, smaller projects typically have less polish, which is something many gamers refuse to compensate for. They want the most simplistic, accessible, refined version of a game possible. Which naturally translates into a game that takes few risks (because it can't, given the amount of money required to fund the game).
It's a sad thing to learn, but it's been like this for over a decade now. It's an unfortunate aspect of human nature that doesn't really show signs of changing any time soon.
You only quoted a part of what I wrote, but the point is that there is no achievement if everyone can do it. It basically says it right there. The point is that in order for something to be worthwhile it can't be achieved by everyone. If everyone can do it then there is no value to being able to do it. Being that it's an MMO and lots of people are (hopefully) playing together in a world where they can see each other and interact with each other (that is the point of playing in an MMO). If you just wanted to have fun solo there are better single player games. If you want to have fun with a friend there are better coop games. If you want to live in a world with other people that is realistic you play an MMORPG IMO.
Are you sure they are the same people saying these things AND then looking for different things in game?
Or do some people say these things on forums and completely different people look for different things in game? I suspect it's the latter.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
"Going down" is your opinion because that is not what you like.
To me, they are going up to be better games, cutting out the tedious parts, and focusing on the fun.
They have gone from mom-and-pop run-down burger joints to chain steak houses.
Yes, the better design for those who are tired of running around is to skip it .. just port to the dungeon and have fun in combat.
The following the arrow (or plain looking for stuff in the wilderness) quests are not fun to me. That is why i don't like Skyrim, too much running around empty wilderness.
I understood that you feel that something being done by everyone makes it uncool or unspecial somehow. I don't feel that way but I've heard the sentiment expressed before so I'm aware that some people do feel this way. What I'm asking is, by what method(s) within a game are you finding out that other people aren't accomplishing something? Because I was thinking that an MMO which was designed to have some tasks that only, say 50% of players could accomplish, would also have to have some method to communicate to all players that this task is one people are failing at regularly, so players who feel the way you do would be motivated to tackle that particular task.
This would be cool if you would actually do it. It would be cool even if the 100 ideas were just written up as designs, which would be significantly cheaper and faster than implementing them even as minimal demos. But the difficult part would be getting people to look at the designs and make comments comparing them. It would be like when they give out awards for novels - in order to vote fairly you have to read 8 or 10 novels, and it's quite difficult to get someone to do that. MMO design descriptions would be shorter than novels, but there would be a lot more. Maybe the designs could be done in sections that were a paragraph or two long, and readers could narrow down the pool of designs each time they voted "dislike" on a section...