There are people who like the logistical challenge, the grinding insane levels nobody else can endure. It's not fun to me but I am not trying to discredit people who do do this and fund it fun. And it is difficult. It would be difficult for me to endure the tedium or be bothered organizing all those people for a 4 hour event.
I don't think there are a lot of those left ... the biggest raid is what ... 25 now? And there are always options with smaller groups. And LFR helps with that.
But it is a good point .. why put anything in a game that many find tedious?
I would say that logistical difficulties, big hp pools on bosses, and an absence of functionality does make a game harder, but only in the manner that queuing at a bank makes your transaction harder. It is an irritation we have to put up with in the real world, but that should be designed out of games.
A queue at a bank doesn't make the transaction harder, just more time-consuming. The transaction is precisely as difficult as without a line, just more tedious and unpleasant.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I believe this all comes back to what makes something worthwhile. If an adventure is always fun is it as fun as if there are times you hate it or times you want to give up, but pull through in the end. I realize most MMOs now are not adventures. They are just mini games you fast teleport to quickly and then get out. I would argue again that while some things are tedious they make certain things in game have purpose or feel more worthwhile once it is accomplished. Not everything has to be difficult to be challenging. It simple has to be an impediment that most people don't have the patience or determination to work out. I find that is the case with many things in life.
'A queue at a bank doesn't make the transaction harder, just more time-consuming. The transaction is precisely as difficult as without a line, just more tedious and unpleasant.'
Poor analogy, I.e long and short offer different types of difficult - not everthing has to be about twitch reactions. running a marathon is a better analogy, 100 meter races are exciting, they provide more intense bursts of adrenalin and pleasure (arguably) than a marathon - so why run marathons - they are sooooo tediousssss. However in the real world people do enjoy the challenge and reward that marathons offer - they enjoy the sense of accomplishment and this is the reward. As with long term goals that includes gathering and repetition with only a solitary long term reward to achieve - not everyone has been brought up on the need to be rewarded every second, and what's more they appreciate that having endless rewards detracts from the experience.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
'A queue at a bank doesn't make the transaction harder, just more time-consuming. The transaction is precisely as difficult as without a line, just more tedious and unpleasant.'
Poor analogy, I.e long and short offer different types of difficult - not everthing has to be about twitch reactions. running a marathon is a better analogy, 100 meter races are exciting, they provide more intense bursts of adrenalin and pleasure (arguably) than a marathon - so why run marathons - they are sooooo tediousssss. However in the real world people do enjoy the challenge and reward that marathons offer - they enjoy the sense of accomplishment and this is the reward. As with long term goals that includes gathering and repetition with only a solitary long term reward to achieve - not everyone has been brought up on the need to be rewarded every second, and what's more they appreciate that having endless rewards detracts from the experience.
Marathon is not entertainment. It is a sport.
"Accomplishment" in pve games (aside from e-sport) is just illusions. A bank queue is actually quite apt .. do people really want to wait in line (camping, anyone, waiting for boats .. is literally waiting, unlike marathon) to get some fun at the end?
I don't.
If i want accomplishment, there are those in real life. I won't go to games to find it. It is like saying sitting through 13 hours of Dare Devil on Netflix is an "accomplishment".
I mean didn't it used to be that you would buy a game and usually never be able to finish it? Games used to be almost impossible to finish and the devs put very little effort into ending scenes because of that, these days it's just how many hours it lasts until you do finish it.
Finishing older games was never a problem for me. But then again it was never about finishing a game in the first place. It was about the journey the game had to offer along the way.
And that is where my problem lies. There is no journey offered in games today. You pickup the game and your done. Kinda like this gif:
This is so hilarious and its 100% true. Games now a days just give you everything on a silver platter. WoW is a FANTASTIC example. Can max out a character/gear out in just a few days tops...
I love that gif man, that is hilarious
Max out a character in full level 100 Mythic best in slot gear in a few days? Let's be clear, a few days means less than two weeks (I'm generous here), otherwise it'll already be "less than few weeks".
Please show us your character with that amazing (read: impossible) feat.
Bashing WoW has always been popular, but doing it without making any sense seems to be popular lately.
JLP, 95% of WOW was a walk in the park. The game was so easy, the term "faceroll" originated from describing how easy WOW was. Most people didn't play the raid part. To start 40-man groups were a pain in the ass to form. Then, once you're in them, you have to deal with the DKP-obsessed exEQ douchebags, elitist clown, and players that simply had no time for less experienced players to cock up their 1.5 hour raid with wipes and buffoonery.
So, while raiding was hard, few ever experienced it in vanilla WOW. Everything else about that game... the majority of the content that people did play... was easy. Epicly faceroll easy.
Yet you still do not max out a character in a few days, and not even in a few weeks, which was the point of my post. Not even if you use the insta-90 shop thing. Max out means best in slot mythic items. You won't find a guild that will simply carry you for that.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems WoW uses specific items for each class now (sets). I think even in the original game it had these types of things. I wouldn't argue that it isn't hard to acquire said items, but is it fun? It's mostly playing through the same instance over and over again to get said items. There isn't even the variety of having possible random encounters with other real players. It is just set up the raid and go in almost exactly the same way repeatedly. You are told which items are best for your class. I could never find that fun. I'd rather just see random items drop that any class could use (though one might not be best). Weather said items was good would be based on the stats and effectiveness more so then the color code. One of the things I find to detract from the enjoyment is how pigeon holed you are into playing a certain way. Everything is laid out before you in a very obvious fashion.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems WoW uses specific items for each class now (sets). I think even in the original game it had these types of things. I wouldn't argue that it isn't hard to acquire said items, but is it fun? It's mostly playing through the same instance over and over again to get said items. There isn't even the variety of having possible random encounters with other real players. It is just set up the raid and go in almost exactly the same way repeatedly. You are told which items are best for your class. I could never find that fun. I'd rather just see random items drop that any class could use (though one might not be best). Weather said items was good would be based on the stats and effectiveness more so then the color code. One of the things I find to detract from the enjoyment is how pigeon holed you are into playing a certain way. Everything is laid out before you in a very obvious fashion.
Yes it's fun. Both because it's rewarding of skill (and challenging) and because it's some of the best group cooperative combat you can find in any genre.
Players tend to be more interested in whether the actual act of playing the game is enjoyable, than the concerns you list here.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems WoW uses specific items for each class now (sets). I think even in the original game it had these types of things. I wouldn't argue that it isn't hard to acquire said items, but is it fun? It's mostly playing through the same instance over and over again to get said items. There isn't even the variety of having possible random encounters with other real players. It is just set up the raid and go in almost exactly the same way repeatedly. You are told which items are best for your class. I could never find that fun. I'd rather just see random items drop that any class could use (though one might not be best). Weather said items was good would be based on the stats and effectiveness more so then the color code. One of the things I find to detract from the enjoyment is how pigeon holed you are into playing a certain way. Everything is laid out before you in a very obvious fashion.
Yes it's fun. Both because it's rewarding of skill (and challenging) and because it's some of the best group cooperative combat you can find in any genre.
Players tend to be more interested in whether the actual act of playing the game is enjoyable, than the concerns you list here.
It seems to me more of a time and organization type of difficulty then an actual difficulty in skill. I believe a few posts ago you said raiding's challenge was mostly in organizing it. I generally agree with that. The actual raiding is fairly dull when you have done it multiple times. It's why I never liked raiding much in the first place. It becomes even less fun when items are just tiers of color coded loot that have already been picked out for your by the developer for your class.
'A queue at a bank doesn't make the transaction harder, just more time-consuming. The transaction is precisely as difficult as without a line, just more tedious and unpleasant.'
Poor analogy, I.e long and short offer different types of difficult - not everthing has to be about twitch reactions. running a marathon is a better analogy, 100 meter races are exciting, they provide more intense bursts of adrenalin and pleasure (arguably) than a marathon - so why run marathons - they are sooooo tediousssss. However in the real world people do enjoy the challenge and reward that marathons offer - they enjoy the sense of accomplishment and this is the reward. As with long term goals that includes gathering and repetition with only a solitary long term reward to achieve - not everyone has been brought up on the need to be rewarded every second, and what's more they appreciate that having endless rewards detracts from the experience.
Marathon is not entertainment. It is a sport.
"Accomplishment" in pve games (aside from e-sport) is just illusions. A bank queue is actually quite apt .. do people really want to wait in line (camping, anyone, waiting for boats .. is literally waiting, unlike marathon) to get some fun at the end?
I don't.
If i want accomplishment, there are those in real life. I won't go to games to find it. It is like saying sitting through 13 hours of Dare Devil on Netflix is an "accomplishment".
Actually, watching a certain amount of Netflix videos in a row was an accomplishment on my Xbox One. Everything is subjective. Dunking a basketball for me would be an accomplishment at my age. It was trivial 15-25 or so.
For me quest grinds are tedious. Nothing is hard about in its basic form about each quest. But there are people like me who flake on the quest grinds because they suck to them and its tedious. Thus many "ez-mode" MMORPG are difficult for me to play because I don't see the point and my tedium level is very low.
For MMORPG tedium generally comes from how much enjoy the journey to how worthwhile the destination is to you. At least how the typical MMORPG is designed. The quest hubs the journey (progression). PvP, Esport, dungeons, end game raids and etc. are the destinations. For me I hate the journey and the end game is ok but not good enough generally for me to want to complete the journey.
I mean didn't it used to be that you would buy a game and usually never be able to finish it? Games used to be almost impossible to finish and the devs put very little effort into ending scenes because of that, these days it's just how many hours it lasts until you do finish it.
Finishing older games was never a problem for me. But then again it was never about finishing a game in the first place. It was about the journey the game had to offer along the way.
And that is where my problem lies. There is no journey offered in games today. You pickup the game and your done. Kinda like this gif:
This is so hilarious and its 100% true. Games now a days just give you everything on a silver platter. WoW is a FANTASTIC example. Can max out a character/gear out in just a few days tops...
I love that gif man, that is hilarious
Max out a character in full level 100 Mythic best in slot gear in a few days? Let's be clear, a few days means less than two weeks (I'm generous here), otherwise it'll already be "less than few weeks".
Please show us your character with that amazing (read: impossible) feat.
Bashing WoW has always been popular, but doing it without making any sense seems to be popular lately.
JLP, 95% of WOW was a walk in the park. The game was so easy, the term "faceroll" originated from describing how easy WOW was. Most people didn't play the raid part. To start 40-man groups were a pain in the ass to form. Then, once you're in them, you have to deal with the DKP-obsessed exEQ douchebags, elitist clown, and players that simply had no time for less experienced players to cock up their 1.5 hour raid with wipes and buffoonery.
So, while raiding was hard, few ever experienced it in vanilla WOW. Everything else about that game... the majority of the content that people did play... was easy. Epicly faceroll easy.
Yet you still do not max out a character in a few days, and not even in a few weeks, which was the point of my post. Not even if you use the insta-90 shop thing. Max out means best in slot mythic items. You won't find a guild that will simply carry you for that.
Wait, if getting best in slot gear is a measure of difficulty, wouldn't that make AA one of the most challenging of them all, since I don't believe anyone has managed to do it?
In fact, BIS gear might just be the ultimate in ovetcoming tedium, but not really so much in the way of challenge.
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
I've personally never seen a problem with that. It's no biggie if someone wants to bypass the leveling process to get to endgame, what they find fun/challenging.
Let's be honest, an averaged skilled player can suss out their class in a day. It's never been rocket science in any MMO, new and old.
Agreed
Ever play City of Heroes? 1 word Drek
Sitting at the entrance to a map doing nothing while others leveled you.
(It was a map farmed for XP)
or how about Anarchy Online? Remember Hecks? Same thing. Sit down on the edge of a hill and watch the NT kill hecks for you.
Or even GW2....I can buy some gems, trade for gold, buy crafting mats according to http://gw2crafts.net/ and level straight up to 80. This is actually closer to Blizz's method than the 2 above.
Powerleveling is not new. Players will do it. It happens in just about every game I have played. And in most cases, players aren't even violating EULA to do it. So what is the real problem some people have here? Don't want to spend the money? Go find a free way to power level? Idealism? Well, maybe it's time to get real. Jealousy? Maybe spending more time trying to figure out how you should level and less time worrying about how others do will enhance your own experience in the game?
I mean didn't it used to be that you would buy a game and usually never be able to finish it? Games used to be almost impossible to finish and the devs put very little effort into ending scenes because of that, these days it's just how many hours it lasts until you do finish it.
Finishing older games was never a problem for me. But then again it was never about finishing a game in the first place. It was about the journey the game had to offer along the way.
And that is where my problem lies. There is no journey offered in games today. You pickup the game and your done. Kinda like this gif:
This is so hilarious and its 100% true. Games now a days just give you everything on a silver platter. WoW is a FANTASTIC example. Can max out a character/gear out in just a few days tops...
I love that gif man, that is hilarious
Max out a character in full level 100 Mythic best in slot gear in a few days? Let's be clear, a few days means less than two weeks (I'm generous here), otherwise it'll already be "less than few weeks".
Please show us your character with that amazing (read: impossible) feat.
Bashing WoW has always been popular, but doing it without making any sense seems to be popular lately.
JLP, 95% of WOW was a walk in the park. The game was so easy, the term "faceroll" originated from describing how easy WOW was. Most people didn't play the raid part. To start 40-man groups were a pain in the ass to form. Then, once you're in them, you have to deal with the DKP-obsessed exEQ douchebags, elitist clown, and players that simply had no time for less experienced players to cock up their 1.5 hour raid with wipes and buffoonery.
So, while raiding was hard, few ever experienced it in vanilla WOW. Everything else about that game... the majority of the content that people did play... was easy. Epicly faceroll easy.
Yet you still do not max out a character in a few days, and not even in a few weeks, which was the point of my post. Not even if you use the insta-90 shop thing. Max out means best in slot mythic items. You won't find a guild that will simply carry you for that.
Dunno about what few days are you talking about? I managed to hit level 1-100 in less than 18hours played time. And full raid gear takes with craft items takes around another 15hours.. So max 3 days and you are ready, pvp is another part, but honestly whole WoW is casual shit crap, I miss the vanila days. I've grown up on Ultima Online (my first MMO) and it can't be compared to the all casual garbage which is released nowadays.
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.? -Albert Einstein
"The ability to speak doesn't make you intelligent" - Qui-gon Jinn. After many years of reading Internet forums, there's no doubt that neither does the ability to write. So if you notice that I'm no longer answering your nonsense, stop trying... because you just joined my block list.
I mean didn't it used to be that you would buy a game and usually never be able to finish it? Games used to be almost impossible to finish and the devs put very little effort into ending scenes because of that, these days it's just how many hours it lasts until you do finish it.
Finishing older games was never a problem for me. But then again it was never about finishing a game in the first place. It was about the journey the game had to offer along the way.
And that is where my problem lies. There is no journey offered in games today. You pickup the game and your done. Kinda like this gif:
This is so hilarious and its 100% true. Games now a days just give you everything on a silver platter. WoW is a FANTASTIC example. Can max out a character/gear out in just a few days tops...
I love that gif man, that is hilarious
Max out a character in full level 100 Mythic best in slot gear in a few days? Let's be clear, a few days means less than two weeks (I'm generous here), otherwise it'll already be "less than few weeks".
Please show us your character with that amazing (read: impossible) feat.
Bashing WoW has always been popular, but doing it without making any sense seems to be popular lately.
JLP, 95% of WOW was a walk in the park. The game was so easy, the term "faceroll" originated from describing how easy WOW was. Most people didn't play the raid part. To start 40-man groups were a pain in the ass to form. Then, once you're in them, you have to deal with the DKP-obsessed exEQ douchebags, elitist clown, and players that simply had no time for less experienced players to cock up their 1.5 hour raid with wipes and buffoonery.
So, while raiding was hard, few ever experienced it in vanilla WOW. Everything else about that game... the majority of the content that people did play... was easy. Epicly faceroll easy.
Yet you still do not max out a character in a few days, and not even in a few weeks, which was the point of my post. Not even if you use the insta-90 shop thing. Max out means best in slot mythic items. You won't find a guild that will simply carry you for that.
Dunno about what few days are you talking about? I managed to hit level 1-100 in less than 18hours played time. And full raid gear takes with craft items takes around another 15hours.. So max 3 days and you are ready, pvp is another part, but honestly whole WoW is casual shit crap, I miss the vanila days. I've grown up on Ultima Online (my first MMO) and it can't be compared to the all casual garbage which is released nowadays.
If that was true (which is isn't for the gear part), your character still wouldn't be "maxed out" as the original post I was answering to was claiming. And if by maxing out, we including all achievements and also PvP, then you are very far from reality. But yeah, WoW bashing is as popular as ever... and in the meantime, people playing WoW have fun
Thanks god I am not the one of mentally challenged players. I gave up a long time ago which I will never regret it. Have fun to wasting your time with garbage game like WoW is. And yes, maxing everything out like some stupid achievements, was never the point of the game or? I can't remember they have been there since vanila. I thought the "MAIN" thing/was to defeat every single boss. So enjoy doing some pathetic crap like achievements, lmao!
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.? -Albert Einstein
"The ability to speak doesn't make you intelligent" - Qui-gon Jinn. After many years of reading Internet forums, there's no doubt that neither does the ability to write. So if you notice that I'm no longer answering your nonsense, stop trying... because you just joined my block list.
Marathon is not entertainment. It is a sport.
"Accomplishment" in pve games (aside from e-sport) is just illusions. A bank queue is actually quite apt .. do people really want to wait in line (camping, anyone, waiting for boats .. is literally waiting, unlike marathon) to get some fun at the end?
I don't.
If i want accomplishment, there are those in real life. I won't go to games to find it. It is like saying sitting through 13 hours of Dare Devil on Netflix is an "accomplishment".
Actually, watching a certain amount of Netflix videos in a row was an accomplishment on my Xbox One. Everything is subjective. Dunking a basketball for me would be an accomplishment at my age. It was trivial 15-25 or so.
For me quest grinds are tedious. Nothing is hard about in its basic form about each quest. But there are people like me who flake on the quest grinds because they suck to them and its tedious. Thus many "ez-mode" MMORPG are difficult for me to play because I don't see the point and my tedium level is very low.
For MMORPG tedium generally comes from how much enjoy the journey to how worthwhile the destination is to you. At least how the typical MMORPG is designed. The quest hubs the journey (progression). PvP, Esport, dungeons, end game raids and etc. are the destinations. For me I hate the journey and the end game is ok but not good enough generally for me to want to complete the journey.
lol .. i get your point .. although you use the word "accomplishment" loosely.
Sure, it is subjective .. and i pretty much is just airing my opinion of what accomplishment means to me. And to me, games are about entertainment .. accomplishment comes from something else.
It seems to me more of a time and organization type of difficulty then an actual difficulty in skill. I believe a few posts ago you said raiding's challenge was mostly in organizing it. I generally agree with that. The actual raiding is fairly dull when you have done it multiple times. It's why I never liked raiding much in the first place. It becomes even less fun when items are just tiers of color coded loot that have already been picked out for your by the developer for your class.
Eh, I wouldn't have said that since raiding is typically where a game's combat challenges are at their highest. The organizational skill involved in raiding isn't really all that much, and is only experienced by a very narrow set of players (the 1-3 leaders typically.)
Meanwhile the act of raiding itself requires considerable skill. In many threads like this one I've pointed out the objective depth to WOW's combat rotations where you can see just by looking at the rotation guide that it takes some practice to master them. And that's just the rotation layer, which is usually deliberately disrupted by the boss/environment layers so that the optimal rotation is never quite the same from fight to fight.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Wait, if getting best in slot gear is a measure of difficulty, wouldn't that make AA one of the most challenging of them all, since I don't believe anyone has managed to do it?
In fact, BIS gear might just be the ultimate in ovetcoming tedium, but not really so much in the way of challenge.
Getting BiS gear isn't the measure of difficulty. The skill requirement of any given encounter was the measure of difficulty.
The fact that not many had BiS gear was an indication of difficulty, but wasn't the difficulty itself.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Not sure how anyone here feels like they even have a shred of credibility? Did any of you who are bashing WoW for being simple/casual even attempt 40 man Naxx in Vanilla WoW, let along defeat ANY RAID BOSS with no previous knowledge? Many raiding-capable guilds were knee deep in shit every night on vent, 40 men wipes countless times to just one trash pack or mini-boss. Even the preparation for every raid were difficult, anywhere from collecting herbs for pots for yourself or guildies to making enough repair bots for the entire raid on the night. This was where the fun and difficulty started and ended with the introduction of casual raiding, consequently, influencing every other MMO to produce similar games with zero mechanical difficulties and no meta-gaming requirements.
Note: C'thun from AQ40 was so fucking hard, Blizzard had to patch it/nerf it so people would stop cheating/glitching to win the fight cause there were no way to beat it in its vanilla form. The only guild that did this pre nerf was Death and Taxes I believe and they were a world class EU raiding guild that stemmed from EQ.
It wasn't about organising 40 people, any hardcore raiding guild then had an application list on their forums of over 100 people and if you failed/missed more than what were allowed, you were kicked from the core raiders and replaced immediately with competent players. If you wanted phat epic lootz, the only way to earn was with DKP (Dragon kill point also from EQ) which meant you have to participate in as many guild events/activities/raids possible, now this is difficult in itself already (since so many people have a subjective view of difficulty, I'll add my own).
This whole argument and its relation to WoW is crap, you're all talking from a perspective of a casual gamer who played 30% of the game's potential and end game then started whinging like every other inpatient casual gamer. How ironic the whole basis of the lack of difficulty in games now is initiated by the very people who lack the meta skills to perceive a whole order of difficulties invisible to them.
JLP, 95% of WOW was a walk in the park. The game was so easy, the term "faceroll" originated from describing how easy WOW was. Most people didn't play the raid part. To start 40-man groups were a pain in the ass to form. Then, once you're in them, you have to deal with the DKP-obsessed exEQ douchebags, elitist clown, and players that simply had no time for less experienced players to cock up their 1.5 hour raid with wipes and buffoonery.
So, while raiding was hard, few ever experienced it in vanilla WOW. Everything else about that game... the majority of the content that people did play... was easy. Epicly faceroll easy.
Apples and oranges...
The main difference WoW made was questing. In pre-WoW era, your main source of XP was from kills, thus having "harder" mobs to kill was desirable as the kills needed to be rewarding, however mobs in WoW serve different purpose.
WoW did not become easier, it just work differently.
Honestly, it wasn't the developers, it was players. I watched it happen starting in EQ2 when people complained because of too much group content. Then people got mad that you had to progress and quest to get to your final class. Encounters went from challenging to "toned down" versions so more people could compete, death became a form of insta travel instead of a defeat. Raid mobs went from being a form of guild competition to a safe zone to casually practice in until you learn everything. This was all changed due to not the majority but a vocal minority that spent more time complaining on the forums than actually playing the game. These people would say they dont have 8 hours a day to play a game but would put in 1-2 hours than 6-7 hours trolling forums instead.
I don't buy this "we make easy game to make money cause hard games dont sell" If that were true then why has almost every themepark easy game failed in the past few years? or since WoW/EQ2 i should say. Developers NOW have just become lazy, everything is basicaly a copy/paste of what was before except with more bugs. Now we have 100s of reskinned, watered down versions of EQ(which newer players will call WoW clones)
People are right though, some stuff did need to change but not to the extent it was changed. Meditating in old eq was ridiculous, corpse runs needed a tweaking not a removal. Death should be painful not a reward.
I don't buy this "we make easy game to make money cause hard games dont sell" If that were true then why has almost every themepark easy game failed in the past few years?
Rift, swtor, tera, GW2, ff14v2, ESO and plenty of other mmorpg's were profitable. Your perception that almost every themepark game failed is wrong.
Iselin: And the next person who says "but it's a business, they need to make money" can just go fuck yourself.
Every time I see this topic I always think of this video my friend told me about.
We have this small percentage of QQers who complain about MMORPGS being "too easy". When the truth is they haven't even played most of the MMORPGS they are QQing about.
All they do is fill their cup up with crap some other QQers was spewing eat it up and spew it out as their own thoughts.
Comments
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Poor analogy, I.e long and short offer different types of difficult - not everthing has to be about twitch reactions. running a marathon is a better analogy, 100 meter races are exciting, they provide more intense bursts of adrenalin and pleasure (arguably) than a marathon - so why run marathons - they are sooooo tediousssss. However in the real world people do enjoy the challenge and reward that marathons offer - they enjoy the sense of accomplishment and this is the reward. As with long term goals that includes gathering and repetition with only a solitary long term reward to achieve - not everyone has been brought up on the need to be rewarded every second, and what's more they appreciate that having endless rewards detracts from the experience.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems WoW uses specific items for each class now (sets). I think even in the original game it had these types of things. I wouldn't argue that it isn't hard to acquire said items, but is it fun? It's mostly playing through the same instance over and over again to get said items. There isn't even the variety of having possible random encounters with other real players. It is just set up the raid and go in almost exactly the same way repeatedly. You are told which items are best for your class. I could never find that fun. I'd rather just see random items drop that any class could use (though one might not be best). Weather said items was good would be based on the stats and effectiveness more so then the color code. One of the things I find to detract from the enjoyment is how pigeon holed you are into playing a certain way. Everything is laid out before you in a very obvious fashion.
Players tend to be more interested in whether the actual act of playing the game is enjoyable, than the concerns you list here.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
It seems to me more of a time and organization type of difficulty then an actual difficulty in skill. I believe a few posts ago you said raiding's challenge was mostly in organizing it. I generally agree with that. The actual raiding is fairly dull when you have done it multiple times. It's why I never liked raiding much in the first place. It becomes even less fun when items are just tiers of color coded loot that have already been picked out for your by the developer for your class.
For me quest grinds are tedious. Nothing is hard about in its basic form about each quest. But there are people like me who flake on the quest grinds because they suck to them and its tedious. Thus many "ez-mode" MMORPG are difficult for me to play because I don't see the point and my tedium level is very low.
For MMORPG tedium generally comes from how much enjoy the journey to how worthwhile the destination is to you. At least how the typical MMORPG is designed. The quest hubs the journey (progression). PvP, Esport, dungeons, end game raids and etc. are the destinations. For me I hate the journey and the end game is ok but not good enough generally for me to want to complete the journey.
In fact, BIS gear might just be the ultimate in ovetcoming tedium, but not really so much in the way of challenge.
"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
Ever play City of Heroes?
1 word
Drek
Sitting at the entrance to a map doing nothing while others leveled you.
(It was a map farmed for XP)
or how about Anarchy Online? Remember Hecks?
Same thing. Sit down on the edge of a hill and watch the NT kill hecks for you.
Or even GW2....I can buy some gems, trade for gold, buy crafting mats according to http://gw2crafts.net/
and level straight up to 80. This is actually closer to Blizz's method than the 2 above.
Powerleveling is not new. Players will do it. It happens in just about every game I have played. And in most cases, players aren't even violating EULA to do it.
So what is the real problem some people have here? Don't want to spend the money? Go find a free way to power level? Idealism? Well, maybe it's time to get real. Jealousy? Maybe spending more time trying to figure out how you should level and less time worrying about how others do will enhance your own experience in the game?
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.? -Albert Einstein
"The ability to speak doesn't make you intelligent" - Qui-gon Jinn. After many years of reading Internet forums, there's no doubt that neither does the ability to write.
So if you notice that I'm no longer answering your nonsense, stop trying... because you just joined my block list.
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.? -Albert Einstein
"The ability to speak doesn't make you intelligent" - Qui-gon Jinn. After many years of reading Internet forums, there's no doubt that neither does the ability to write.
So if you notice that I'm no longer answering your nonsense, stop trying... because you just joined my block list.
Sure, it is subjective .. and i pretty much is just airing my opinion of what accomplishment means to me. And to me, games are about entertainment .. accomplishment comes from something else.
Meanwhile the act of raiding itself requires considerable skill. In many threads like this one I've pointed out the objective depth to WOW's combat rotations where you can see just by looking at the rotation guide that it takes some practice to master them. And that's just the rotation layer, which is usually deliberately disrupted by the boss/environment layers so that the optimal rotation is never quite the same from fight to fight.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Getting BiS gear isn't the measure of difficulty. The skill requirement of any given encounter was the measure of difficulty.
The fact that not many had BiS gear was an indication of difficulty, but wasn't the difficulty itself.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
two words:
competition
convenience
horse wagons got outdated , when the lorries hit the roads too
Note: C'thun from AQ40 was so fucking hard, Blizzard had to patch it/nerf it so people would stop cheating/glitching to win the fight cause there were no way to beat it in its vanilla form. The only guild that did this pre nerf was Death and Taxes I believe and they were a world class EU raiding guild that stemmed from EQ.
It wasn't about organising 40 people, any hardcore raiding guild then had an application list on their forums of over 100 people and if you failed/missed more than what were allowed, you were kicked from the core raiders and replaced immediately with competent players. If you wanted phat epic lootz, the only way to earn was with DKP (Dragon kill point also from EQ) which meant you have to participate in as many guild events/activities/raids possible, now this is difficult in itself already (since so many people have a subjective view of difficulty, I'll add my own).
This whole argument and its relation to WoW is crap, you're all talking from a perspective of a casual gamer who played 30% of the game's potential and end game then started whinging like every other inpatient casual gamer. How ironic the whole basis of the lack of difficulty in games now is initiated by the very people who lack the meta skills to perceive a whole order of difficulties invisible to them.
The main difference WoW made was questing. In pre-WoW era, your main source of XP was from kills, thus having "harder" mobs to kill was desirable as the kills needed to be rewarding, however mobs in WoW serve different purpose.
WoW did not become easier, it just work differently.
I don't buy this "we make easy game to make money cause hard games dont sell" If that were true then why has almost every themepark easy game failed in the past few years? or since WoW/EQ2 i should say. Developers NOW have just become lazy, everything is basicaly a copy/paste of what was before except with more bugs. Now we have 100s of reskinned, watered down versions of EQ(which newer players will call WoW clones)
People are right though, some stuff did need to change but not to the extent it was changed. Meditating in old eq was ridiculous, corpse runs needed a tweaking not a removal. Death should be painful not a reward.
We have this small percentage of QQers who complain about MMORPGS being "too easy". When the truth is they haven't even played most of the MMORPGS they are QQing about.
All they do is fill their cup up with crap some other QQers was spewing eat it up and spew it out as their own thoughts.