It's not either or. Challenging without entertaining isn't challenge it's just difficulty.
Well, too challenging is not entertaining. If i have to learn & practice a boss fight 500 times before i have a 50% beating it, it is not entertaining at all.
Threads like this greatly amuse me. Why is it that people don't make threads about how cars, trains, and airplanes have dumbed down real life travel time? Why don't people complain about how GPS systems lead drivers directly to their destination without their having to learn the names of roads or to even learn to use a roadmap? Why don't I see threads about how computers and smartphones have virtual destroyed interpersonal communication? Remember the days when you actually sent a hand-written thank you letter aftera job interview?
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say its probably because this is an MMO forum and not an auto club or technogeek chatroom
-you're welcome
The above is my personal opinion. Anyone displaying a view contrary to my opinion is obviously WRONG and should STHU. (neener neener)
It's not either or. Challenging without entertaining isn't challenge it's just difficulty.
Well, too challenging is not entertaining. If i have to learn & practice a boss fight 500 times before i have a 50% beating it, it is not entertaining at all.
I don't think anyone but the most extreme fanatics would disagree. The problem is when the opposite route is taken, and everything becomes a cakewalk without any sort of gratification/ sense of accomplishment.
I believe that the basis for that is based on exclusion (unfortunately? realistically). When the devs cave and give every single player a champion trophy due to whines and tears, then what's the point? Isn't the basis of MMOs risk/effort and reward based?
If I want to see heads explode for the hell of it, I'll go play an FPS zombie shooter. The genres are completely different and appeal to different desires/ player bases.
The most intelligent 14-year-old in 2008 is now only on a par with the brightest 12-year-old in 1976, according to the findings.
Researchers at King's College, London, asked 800 children aged 13 and 14 to take a series of tests which measured their understanding of abstract scientific concepts such as volume, density, quantity and weight.
The results were compared with a similar exercise in 1976.
In a test known as the pendulum test just over one in ten were found to have reached top grades which demanded a 'higher level of thinking', a significant drop from the 1976 result of one in four.
In a second test, which assessed mathematical thinking skills, one in five youngsters in 1976 had achieved high grades whereas the figure from the most recent study was only one in 20.
Professor Michael Shayar, who led the study, said: "The pendulum test does not require any knowledge of science at all. It looks at how people can deal with complex information and sort it out for themselves."
He believes that the decline in brainpower has happened over the last ten to 15 years and could be a result of national curriculum targets which drill children for tests as well as changes in children's leisure activities, such as an increase in computer games and television watching.
This and other studies conclude that while computers, consoles and smart phones are making our lives easier they are also makeing us dumber at the same time.
The most intelligent 14-year-old in 2008 is now only on a par with the brightest 12-year-old in 1976, according to the findings.
Researchers at King's College, London, asked 800 children aged 13 and 14 to take a series of tests which measured their understanding of abstract scientific concepts such as volume, density, quantity and weight.
The results were compared with a similar exercise in 1976.
In a test known as the pendulum test just over one in ten were found to have reached top grades which demanded a 'higher level of thinking', a significant drop from the 1976 result of one in four.
In a second test, which assessed mathematical thinking skills, one in five youngsters in 1976 had achieved high grades whereas the figure from the most recent study was only one in 20.
Professor Michael Shayar, who led the study, said: "The pendulum test does not require any knowledge of science at all. It looks at how people can deal with complex information and sort it out for themselves."
He believes that the decline in brainpower has happened over the last ten to 15 years and could be a result of national curriculum targets which drill children for tests as well as changes in children's leisure activities, such as an increase in computer games and television watching.
This and other studies conclude that while computers, consoles and smart phones are making our lives easier they are also makeing us dumber at the same time.
At the same time, he says the fact that students learn to give fast answers doesn’t mean they can’t think in a complex way in different situations. “College students today are bombarded with information, and they have to process that information and make decisions,” Lott says. “The level of multitasking they can do now strikes me as showing a lot of complex thinking.
Sounds like brain power is being used in a different way, not actually lacking. Also, I am not familiar with the tests used here, but it sounds like they are focused on logic and mathemathical thinking/intelligence, which is only one type of intelligence.
The most intelligent 14-year-old in 2008 is now only on a par with the brightest 12-year-old in 1976, according to the findings.
Researchers at King's College, London, asked 800 children aged 13 and 14 to take a series of tests which measured their understanding of abstract scientific concepts such as volume, density, quantity and weight.
The results were compared with a similar exercise in 1976.
In a test known as the pendulum test just over one in ten were found to have reached top grades which demanded a 'higher level of thinking', a significant drop from the 1976 result of one in four.
In a second test, which assessed mathematical thinking skills, one in five youngsters in 1976 had achieved high grades whereas the figure from the most recent study was only one in 20.
Professor Michael Shayar, who led the study, said: "The pendulum test does not require any knowledge of science at all. It looks at how people can deal with complex information and sort it out for themselves."
He believes that the decline in brainpower has happened over the last ten to 15 years and could be a result of national curriculum targets which drill children for tests as well as changes in children's leisure activities, such as an increase in computer games and television watching.
This and other studies conclude that while computers, consoles and smart phones are making our lives easier they are also makeing us dumber at the same time.
At the same time, he says the fact that students learn to give fast answers doesn’t mean they can’t think in a complex way in different situations. “College students today are bombarded with information, and they have to process that information and make decisions,” Lott says. “The level of multitasking they can do now strikes me as showing a lot of complex thinking.
Sounds like brain power is being used in a different way, not actually lacking. Also, I am not familiar with the tests used here, but it sounds like they are focused on logic and mathemathical thinking/intelligence, which is only one type of intelligence.
Thiers got to be alot of these studys around, but this guy says in the green text its really about complex information and how they sort it. I agree with the idea technology is making people lazy or dumb. To the main topic Ive played games ever since my first computer Apple IIE. And Ive noticed that the genre of mainstream games have become easy mode. The harder ones are still out thier but not as popular.
Are games dumbing down or are you just too much of a gaming veteran to be challenged by the same games? Have you sat and watched non-gamers play the games you play? Or even better occasionally I will watch my nephew/niece play games on the Wii. And while partly I am shocked at how well they pick up and learn games, I also cringe watching them because they are hitting all the same traps, issues, hard bosses that a veteran gamer would not find challenging at all. It's like sitting there and watching someone hunt and peck on your keyboard, you want to be like STEP ASIDE I GOT THIS.
Boring games to me are exciting and fun to a younger generation. Does not that mean that games have gotten easier, or we have learned how to beat games. It's like starting out playing Chutes and Ladders, Checkers, or Candy Land, then being challenged by Chess, Mastermind, and Crossword Puzzles then when the latest and greatest "Candy Land v3.0" comes you, you complain about games being too easy.
Then again watching a 5 year old "pwn newbs" in WoW's BGs also tells you something.
"They essentially want to say 'Correlation proves Causation' when it's just not true." - Sovrath
The most intelligent 14-year-old in 2008 is now only on a par with the brightest 12-year-old in 1976, according to the findings.
Researchers at King's College, London, asked 800 children aged 13 and 14 to take a series of tests which measured their understanding of abstract scientific concepts such as volume, density, quantity and weight.
The results were compared with a similar exercise in 1976.
In a test known as the pendulum test just over one in ten were found to have reached top grades which demanded a 'higher level of thinking', a significant drop from the 1976 result of one in four.
In a second test, which assessed mathematical thinking skills, one in five youngsters in 1976 had achieved high grades whereas the figure from the most recent study was only one in 20.
Professor Michael Shayar, who led the study, said: "The pendulum test does not require any knowledge of science at all. It looks at how people can deal with complex information and sort it out for themselves."
He believes that the decline in brainpower has happened over the last ten to 15 years and could be a result of national curriculum targets which drill children for tests as well as changes in children's leisure activities, such as an increase in computer games and television watching.
This and other studies conclude that while computers, consoles and smart phones are making our lives easier they are also makeing us dumber at the same time.
At the same time, he says the fact that students learn to give fast answers doesn’t mean they can’t think in a complex way in different situations. “College students today are bombarded with information, and they have to process that information and make decisions,” Lott says. “The level of multitasking they can do now strikes me as showing a lot of complex thinking.
Sounds like brain power is being used in a different way, not actually lacking. Also, I am not familiar with the tests used here, but it sounds like they are focused on logic and mathemathical thinking/intelligence, which is only one type of intelligence.
Thiers got to be alot of these studys around, but this guy says in the green text its really about complex information and how they sort it. I agree with the idea technology is making people lazy or dumb. To the main topic Ive played games ever since my first computer Apple IIE. And Ive noticed that the genre of mainstream games have become easy mode. The harder ones are still out thier but not as popular.
I got the part in green, but it depends on what field those complex information belong to. For example you don't need knowledge in the field of science to get a good score on a Raven test, but it still tests logico-mathemathical thinking. Without seeing the actual test, I can only speculate tho.
I agree that technology can make people lazy in the thinking department and especially in the memory deparment, but if they started using these these areas of the psychy most would be able to improve, so I wouldn't say people are dumb because of technology, they just can avoid training these skills or use different ones (or maybe I just like to hope so).
It's not either or. Challenging without entertaining isn't challenge it's just difficulty.
Well, too challenging is not entertaining. If i have to learn & practice a boss fight 500 times before i have a 50% beating it, it is not entertaining at all.
I don't think anyone but the most extreme fanatics would disagree. The problem is when the opposite route is taken, and everything becomes a cakewalk without any sort of gratification/ sense of accomplishment.
I believe that the basis for that is based on exclusion (unfortunately? realistically). When the devs cave and give every single player a champion trophy due to whines and tears, then what's the point? Isn't the basis of MMOs risk/effort and reward based?
If I want to see heads explode for the hell of it, I'll go play an FPS zombie shooter. The genres are completely different and appeal to different desires/ player bases.
But it is not. Hard mode raids and hard core inferno difficulties are hard .. and those are completed by only a very small percentage of players.
The fact that most players are given SOMETHING does not diminish the fact that those difficult challenges are there. In fact, there will be more with MOP hit the market .. there will be "challenge dungeons" with "achievements" you can wear.
My entry point into gaming was PONG, Atari 2600, and the Magnavox Odessey. One button on the controller. It was amazing at the time -- hand-to-eye coordination in its purest form. Up the difficulty until you could simply not react fast enough. The early games didn't end. You played until the game kicked your a**...and you knew it eventually would. That's the way games worked. Very simple fun, but also harsh. Games like Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, Space Invaders, KC's Crazy Chase, etc.
Later came Colecovision and Intellivision (holy crap Intellivision had lots of buttons). Though there was color, the games didn't really change much. Same old..play until you could not surpass the speed of sound and light, your brain could not react as fast as objects on the screen.
While this type of level-difficulty design is still present in video games today, many games do have an actual end and a larger variety of games are available. I have an 8 year old here that can absolutely hand me my a** in any Xbox 360 game. However, I have noticed that most of my kids tend to stray away from difficulty challenges. Instead the difficulty comes in the form of more complex controls, themes, and the multitude of genres available today. Interaction, in itself, is more challenging and the mind processes entertainment in ways that become increasingly closer to reality.
I do agree that challenge is less of a factor today with games, but the challenges are still out there should a gamer wish to seek one out. But that's a natural progression, don't you think? Not everybody is a competitve gamer? It just means more people are playing video games.
Being born in the early 60's arcade boxes were my introduction then my parents got the "delux" pong/hocky/handball set. The first game I played on a "Computer" was Wizardy 1 on the Apple 2E. I played alot of text editor games that were FAR from easy, remember Zork? As far as online I played Muds on a Unix system in the late 80's.
Threads like this greatly amuse me. Why is it that people don't make threads about how cars, trains, and airplanes have dumbed down real life travel time? Why don't people complain about how GPS systems lead drivers directly to their destination without their having to learn the names of roads or to even learn to use a roadmap? Why don't I see threads about how computers and smartphones have virtual destroyed interpersonal communication? Remember the days when you actually sent a hand-written thank you letter aftera job interview?
We're so quick to claim ourselves superior when we played hard, rugged oldschool games, yet hilariously we won't apply that same concept to real life. Well, that may not be entirely accurate. Some people do. Likely your 75 year old grandparents. Congratulations OP, you're ranting about the younger generation like a 75 year old grandpa.
Was mailing a letter meant to provide entertainment? Is getting lost or referring to antiquated paper maps a pleasure? Is travelling three weeks on a horse-drawn carriage while stricken with dysentery to cross the continent meant to be intellectually stimulating?
Absolutely NONE of what you said translates to games. Coding a piece of software that "plays itself" (if you want to apply evolution to the medium, there it is) and requires no "effort" sort of annihilates all intrinsic elements.
Modern video games can and do provide thousands of hours of entertainment to millions of people around the world. There are a myriad of other reasons to have fun playing a video game than whether or not you can get off on your ability to showcase your "skillz."
What is the difference in a GPS and a quest helper? Please inform me how those two do not relate to one another. In both instances, you have an end-goal in mind and a means of figuring out excactly where to go without any prior research. People are whining in this very thread about how quest helpers have made MMORPGs too easy, but how many of them say that GPS systems have ruined navigation skills? Any time I ever get into a car with my parents, it's as if they're hell bent on not following my GPS's directions.
In EQ, you had to learn to socialize and to make friends in order to make it through the game unlike in WoW where you can basically solo to the level cap. How is that different from a face-to-face conversation, handwritten letter, or telephone call vs an email or a text message? In both instances, you're not having to exercise near the amount of social skills to get what you want.
Are you arguing that the older generation doesn't find a sense of pride in the way they lived vs the way we live today? It's not that horses and wagons and such were that great because they sure made life more difficult. That's the point though. People who lived in that era feel better about themselves having faced those challenges versus having the modern conveniences of today.
These are all real life examples of modern conveniences. Similarly, video games have a lot of modern conveniences. I think a lot of what makes people perceive oldschool games to be so difficult are antiquated design decisions and not so much the difficulty of the actual content.
What is interesting to me; however, is the real disconnect between how people view challenge in real life and how people view challenge in a video game. No one finds walking everywhere very fun in real life yet people here always moan about how fast travel ruins video games. We complain about how modern MMORPGs fail to promote social interaction, yet most of us couldn't imagine actually driving to a store to pick up a PC game, where we'd actually have to interact with the cashier. People complain how video games are too easy and how gamers no longer have to work for anything, yet I doubt many of the complainers have real life PhDs in electrical engineering if they even have college degrees.
Why then do gamers enjoy being faced with pixelated challengers yet shy away from any real life challenges?
Threads like this greatly amuse me. Why is it that people don't make threads about how cars, trains, and airplanes have dumbed down real life travel time? Why don't people complain about how GPS systems lead drivers directly to their destination without their having to learn the names of roads or to even learn to use a roadmap? Why don't I see threads about how computers and smartphones have virtual destroyed interpersonal communication? Remember the days when you actually sent a hand-written thank you letter aftera job interview?
We're so quick to claim ourselves superior when we played hard, rugged oldschool games, yet hilariously we won't apply that same concept to real life. Well, that may not be entirely accurate. Some people do. Likely your 75 year old grandparents. Congratulations OP, you're ranting about the younger generation like a 75 year old grandpa.
You are right. Just for shits and giggles though please tell me everyone in your phone's number without actually looking at it. In my day we KNEW people's phone numbers by heart.
"I am not in a server with Gankers...THEY ARE IN A SERVER WITH ME!!!"
It's not either or. Challenging without entertaining isn't challenge it's just difficulty.
Well, too challenging is not entertaining. If i have to learn & practice a boss fight 500 times before i have a 50% beating it, it is not entertaining at all.
I don't think anyone but the most extreme fanatics would disagree. The problem is when the opposite route is taken, and everything becomes a cakewalk without any sort of gratification/ sense of accomplishment.
I believe that the basis for that is based on exclusion (unfortunately? realistically). When the devs cave and give every single player a champion trophy due to whines and tears, then what's the point? Isn't the basis of MMOs risk/effort and reward based?
If I want to see heads explode for the hell of it, I'll go play an FPS zombie shooter. The genres are completely different and appeal to different desires/ player bases.
But it is not. Hard mode raids and hard core inferno difficulties are hard .. and those are completed by only a very small percentage of players.
The fact that most players are given SOMETHING does not diminish the fact that those difficult challenges are there. In fact, there will be more with MOP hit the market .. there will be "challenge dungeons" with "achievements" you can wear.
i think its funny that you posted this based off what was in red.considering blizzard is well known for tweaking things based off casual complaints.i was laughing hard at there "challenge"mode in mop,i bet the challenge will be how long the stuff will stay hard until they cave to the sobbing casual crybabys and nerf it
but whatever,i could care less anyway.i quit wow months ago and i dont plan on returning for mop
You are right. Just for shits and giggles though please tell me everyone in your phone's number without actually looking at it. In my day we KNEW people's phone numbers by heart.
I know people of ALL ages who don't remember phone numbers by heart anymore.
... just like you don't know people who know how to use slide rules anymore... and even in China, the amount of people who can use an abacus? Shamefully declining.
... and the fine art of manuscript copying by hand as practiced by monks is pretty much shot to hell.
... and do you know what percentage of people know how to chip flint tools?
Outdated skills are... well, outdated. People tell themselves outdated skills (Like memorizing all your phone contacts by heart) were useful, because nobody likes to admit they possess skills that are useful as knowing how to braid buggy whips.
(Though braiding buggy whips STILl more useful than being good at video games from the 80s. Just saying. )
I feel like myself and many others would enjoy a game, or games even, aimed at the traditional and dare I say, classic? gaming audience. I refrain from just saying MMO audience given the magnitude of the simplifying of games and gaming.
Aiming at a more traditional audience, I of course mean a harder game, a more challenging game, that gets you involved and to do things, as opposed to doing things for you and you just being on there for a ride. Players will do just perfectly fine reading and learning where to run to, rather than being shown on several map and pointer features the exact point of the next location of their current task.
I am envious of the people who used paper based maps in old adventure games. I want to go back in time to that era. I'm saddened that I was born to a generation that skipped on the old school goodness, and have forever been searching for some.
Currently hapily playing Neverwinter Nights. Wheeee.
Well, i'm 20 so i'm don't have the best judgement . But, i believe what's happening is conviniece. Now, IMO, making things easier isn't necessarily a bad thing. Giving a "break" to players doesn't mean dumbing down. If i'm correct, one of earliest Super Mario games didn't have a save options, which meant going back over and over and over. Allowing saves isn't that much of a big deal.
What i think as happened is that in the effort to not stress out the players, everything as been made too easy. What probably happened was that games in general went from unforgiving and hardcore to extreme convinience and easy mode. Finding a balance is the key. Death penalties for example. Nowadays, they don't even exist, just a mindless reaspawn, but having an actually punishement for defeat doesn't have to mean "hardcore mode on."
I am envious of the people who used paper based maps in old adventure games. I want to go back in time to that era. I'm saddened that I was born to a generation that skipped on the old school goodness, and have forever been searching for some.
I don't. I was there. It was a pain in the ass. I remember the first Might & magic, and uncountable number of graph papers for the map. It is not hard to map .. how hard can it be? Just note down the walls. But it is horribly boring & tedious.
Older != better. It is not old school goodness .... it is old school boredem.
And .. if you like mapping so much, just turn off the auto-map or don't look at it.
I always LOL at the people who think that doing everythign by hand is superior and fun. Heck, even Ultima 6 provides a CLOTH MAP so that you don't have to map stuff out yourself.
I don't play games to be a cartologist. It is a boring job.
I am envious of the people who used paper based maps in old adventure games. I want to go back in time to that era. I'm saddened that I was born to a generation that skipped on the old school goodness, and have forever been searching for some.
I don't. I was there. It was a pain in the ass. I remember the first Might & magic, and uncountable number of graph papers for the map. It is not hard to map .. how hard can it be? Just note down the walls. But it is horribly boring & tedious.
Older != better. It is not old school goodness .... it is old school boredem.
And .. if you like mapping so much, just turn off the auto-map or don't look at it.
I always LOL at the people who think that doing everythign by hand is superior and fun. Heck, even Ultima 6 provides a CLOTH MAP so that you don't have to map stuff out yourself.
I don't play games to be a cartologist. It is a boring job.
Skyrim gave me a paper map. Someone out there is obviously still catering to us cartographers.
Enter a whole new realm of challenge and adventure.
I am envious of the people who used paper based maps in old adventure games. I want to go back in time to that era. I'm saddened that I was born to a generation that skipped on the old school goodness, and have forever been searching for some.
I don't. I was there. It was a pain in the ass. I remember the first Might & magic, and uncountable number of graph papers for the map. It is not hard to map .. how hard can it be? Just note down the walls. But it is horribly boring & tedious.
Older != better. It is not old school goodness .... it is old school boredem.
And .. if you like mapping so much, just turn off the auto-map or don't look at it.
I always LOL at the people who think that doing everythign by hand is superior and fun. Heck, even Ultima 6 provides a CLOTH MAP so that you don't have to map stuff out yourself.
I don't play games to be a cartologist. It is a boring job.
Haha I remember those games, me I wasnt into many of them, X-wing, Tie Fighter, Wing Commander and Rogue Spear. You brought back a image of my college roomate making his own maps on graph paper for the dungeons. Now they draw it on the map for you and point a arrow to your next waypoint. They even make it glow and practically say hey click here to continue on your quest.
Sometimes I miss it but Im only remembering the good and not the rage cussing. Maybe they just need to make more secret content to make us old gamers happy.
I am envious of the people who used paper based maps in old adventure games. I want to go back in time to that era. I'm saddened that I was born to a generation that skipped on the old school goodness, and have forever been searching for some.
I don't. I was there. It was a pain in the ass. I remember the first Might & magic, and uncountable number of graph papers for the map. It is not hard to map .. how hard can it be? Just note down the walls. But it is horribly boring & tedious.
Older != better. It is not old school goodness .... it is old school boredem.
And .. if you like mapping so much, just turn off the auto-map or don't look at it.
I always LOL at the people who think that doing everythign by hand is superior and fun. Heck, even Ultima 6 provides a CLOTH MAP so that you don't have to map stuff out yourself.
I don't play games to be a cartologist. It is a boring job.
Skyrim gave me a paper map. Someone out there is obviously still catering to us cartographers.
I like trinkets though. I still have my Ultima 6 map hung on the wall behind my computer desk. I bought the collector's edition, which also gives me the rune stone that teleport me to Britainnia.
Ah, you are a young pup, NES LOL! I started on a TI-75 and a Commador and the Apple IIE was cutting edge for my generation. But to the point, I feel games have become easier for a couple reasons: 1. Suites took over and all they care about is making money and quantity became more important than quality. 2. The "every kid gets a trophy" generation is now playing games and god forbid they have to actually work for anything. So, to make money, games are dumbed down so that generation can continue to not have to deal with failure. God help us, we have raised a bunch of pansies that can't deal with having to work for anything in a game; let alone life... Just my 2 CPs.
I couldn't agree more with that statement.
I'm 32, started playing video games on my grandpas commodore 64 (Dragon Wars & Wasteland FTW) and truly miss the difficulty that came with the classics.
I do agree that challenge is less of a factor today with games, but the challenges are still out there should a gamer wish to seek one out. But that's a natural progression, don't you think? Not everybody is a competitve gamer? It just means more people are playing video games.
Well, besides the hand-eye coordination side of it (to which I DESTROY all my friends, comparably), I was leaning more towards the 'thinking man's game' side of hte argument. Abstract logic and whatnot, as needed in an exploration game like the original Metroid, or the various adventure games of old (Maniac Mansion ftw).
It seems to me that games, as a collective, have moved towards having to think less (thusly, less complicated and challenging in that regard), and being much more competitive - which turns me way off - because I can't stand a sore loser... and I have seen my share of them over the years, progressively getting worse as games get more simple, strangely enough.
Nobody in their right mind would argue that MGS games lack enough cutscenes. It's a difficult game when you can actually make them all STFU (!!!) and just let you play the damned thing. So it's hard to determine what people stopped playing because of the blabbity blab, and those that stopped because they were getting their ass handed to them. I have a friend that was psyched about MGS4 until he got his hands on it, and I can't figure which part of it made him stop playing... he is as impatient as he is stupid, so it's hard to tell.
I somewhat disagree. I was born in 89, first game I played was commander keen and duke nukem on the pc and contra on the nes. Games back then were simple like a previous poster said. They were straight up related to the skill of your hand eye coordination and there was never much thought at all put into them.
Now take a modern game like, say any modern shooter. Yeah you could agrue they are just as mindless and based on reflex....buuuuut, they are so much more complex and there are more things to process. For example, I'll take Battlefield 3. It's more of a mind game, to survive. To be good at it, you have to survive while completeing objectives(capture points, gain kills, destroy coms, etc). Now difficulty is....difficult...to see in a game like this though because the experience will always be relative to the player's committment and involvement. To me, dying in BF3 means I failed, I let my gaurd down. To others, dying means a 5 second respawn to jump back into the game and do it again. It's all relative to the player.
To be a good player, you have to study yout surroundings, be aware, study your opposing team, find their weakest player and strongest player, find a path of least resistance where you will always come out on top...well it is a lot like real life and try to survive. Hah, barely anyone plays that way. They spawn, run out, die, spawn, run out, die.
The difficulty in games hasn't really declined, it's just more of the intense harsh rules of old games that make new games seem easy to "beat". Playing through Contra for example, your eyes are glued to the screen and your hands are getting sweaty because you know if you blink you're gonna die and if you're out of lives, it is gg and you start from the beginning. That mindset is less and less brought out in games today because, well to appeal to a larger audience, games have to be fun for everyone of all skill levels.
Originally posted by Arskaaa "when players learned tacticks in dungeon/raids, its bread".
Ah, you are a young pup, NES LOL! I started on a TI-75 and a Commador and the Apple IIE was cutting edge for my generation. But to the point, I feel games have become easier for a couple reasons: 1. Suites took over and all they care about is making money and quantity became more important than quality. 2. The "every kid gets a trophy" generation is now playing games and god forbid they have to actually work for anything. So, to make money, games are dumbed down so that generation can continue to not have to deal with failure. God help us, we have raised a bunch of pansies that can't deal with having to work for anything in a game; let alone life... Just my 2 CPs.
I couldn't agree more with that statement.
I'm 32, started playing video games on my grandpas commodore 64 (Dragon Wars & Wasteland FTW) and truly miss the difficulty that came with the classics.
A lot of the truly dedicated developers out there must feel torn really because they have these visions and dreams they want to make a reality...or I should say virtual reality BUT they also need to make a living off it. So there is a huge conflict of interest there.
Originally posted by Arskaaa "when players learned tacticks in dungeon/raids, its bread".
Skyrim gave me a paper map. Someone out there is obviously still catering to us cartographers.
Cartophiles aren't necessarily the same demopgrahic as cartographers.
One likes maps. The second likes making maps.
Skyrim has a minimap and a map, so it doesn't appeal to cartographers directly.
I don't think I would say it could never be fun, but in most of my games I definitely don't want to waste a bunch of time creating the map for it just because the game couldn't be bothered to put in a minimap.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
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Well, too challenging is not entertaining. If i have to learn & practice a boss fight 500 times before i have a 50% beating it, it is not entertaining at all.
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say its probably because this is an MMO forum and not an auto club or technogeek chatroom
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The above is my personal opinion. Anyone displaying a view contrary to my opinion is obviously WRONG and should STHU. (neener neener)
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I don't think anyone but the most extreme fanatics would disagree. The problem is when the opposite route is taken, and everything becomes a cakewalk without any sort of gratification/ sense of accomplishment.
I believe that the basis for that is based on exclusion (unfortunately? realistically). When the devs cave and give every single player a champion trophy due to whines and tears, then what's the point? Isn't the basis of MMOs risk/effort and reward based?
If I want to see heads explode for the hell of it, I'll go play an FPS zombie shooter. The genres are completely different and appeal to different desires/ player bases.
The most intelligent 14-year-old in 2008 is now only on a par with the brightest 12-year-old in 1976, according to the findings.
Researchers at King's College, London, asked 800 children aged 13 and 14 to take a series of tests which measured their understanding of abstract scientific concepts such as volume, density, quantity and weight.
The results were compared with a similar exercise in 1976.
In a test known as the pendulum test just over one in ten were found to have reached top grades which demanded a 'higher level of thinking', a significant drop from the 1976 result of one in four.
In a second test, which assessed mathematical thinking skills, one in five youngsters in 1976 had achieved high grades whereas the figure from the most recent study was only one in 20.
Professor Michael Shayar, who led the study, said: "The pendulum test does not require any knowledge of science at all. It looks at how people can deal with complex information and sort it out for themselves."
He believes that the decline in brainpower has happened over the last ten to 15 years and could be a result of national curriculum targets which drill children for tests as well as changes in children's leisure activities, such as an increase in computer games and television watching.
This and other studies conclude that while computers, consoles and smart phones are making our lives easier they are also makeing us dumber at the same time.At the same time, he says the fact that students learn to give fast answers doesn’t mean they can’t think in a complex way in different situations. “College students today are bombarded with information, and they have to process that information and make decisions,” Lott says. “The level of multitasking they can do now strikes me as showing a lot of complex thinking.
Sounds like brain power is being used in a different way, not actually lacking. Also, I am not familiar with the tests used here, but it sounds like they are focused on logic and mathemathical thinking/intelligence, which is only one type of intelligence.
Thiers got to be alot of these studys around, but this guy says in the green text its really about complex information and how they sort it. I agree with the idea technology is making people lazy or dumb. To the main topic Ive played games ever since my first computer Apple IIE. And Ive noticed that the genre of mainstream games have become easy mode. The harder ones are still out thier but not as popular.
Are games dumbing down or are you just too much of a gaming veteran to be challenged by the same games? Have you sat and watched non-gamers play the games you play? Or even better occasionally I will watch my nephew/niece play games on the Wii. And while partly I am shocked at how well they pick up and learn games, I also cringe watching them because they are hitting all the same traps, issues, hard bosses that a veteran gamer would not find challenging at all. It's like sitting there and watching someone hunt and peck on your keyboard, you want to be like STEP ASIDE I GOT THIS.
Boring games to me are exciting and fun to a younger generation. Does not that mean that games have gotten easier, or we have learned how to beat games. It's like starting out playing Chutes and Ladders, Checkers, or Candy Land, then being challenged by Chess, Mastermind, and Crossword Puzzles then when the latest and greatest "Candy Land v3.0" comes you, you complain about games being too easy.
Then again watching a 5 year old "pwn newbs" in WoW's BGs also tells you something.
"They essentially want to say 'Correlation proves Causation' when it's just not true." - Sovrath
I got the part in green, but it depends on what field those complex information belong to. For example you don't need knowledge in the field of science to get a good score on a Raven test, but it still tests logico-mathemathical thinking. Without seeing the actual test, I can only speculate tho.
I agree that technology can make people lazy in the thinking department and especially in the memory deparment, but if they started using these these areas of the psychy most would be able to improve, so I wouldn't say people are dumb because of technology, they just can avoid training these skills or use different ones (or maybe I just like to hope so).
But it is not. Hard mode raids and hard core inferno difficulties are hard .. and those are completed by only a very small percentage of players.
The fact that most players are given SOMETHING does not diminish the fact that those difficult challenges are there. In fact, there will be more with MOP hit the market .. there will be "challenge dungeons" with "achievements" you can wear.
Being born in the early 60's arcade boxes were my introduction then my parents got the "delux" pong/hocky/handball set. The first game I played on a "Computer" was Wizardy 1 on the Apple 2E. I played alot of text editor games that were FAR from easy, remember Zork? As far as online I played Muds on a Unix system in the late 80's.
Modern video games can and do provide thousands of hours of entertainment to millions of people around the world. There are a myriad of other reasons to have fun playing a video game than whether or not you can get off on your ability to showcase your "skillz."
What is the difference in a GPS and a quest helper? Please inform me how those two do not relate to one another. In both instances, you have an end-goal in mind and a means of figuring out excactly where to go without any prior research. People are whining in this very thread about how quest helpers have made MMORPGs too easy, but how many of them say that GPS systems have ruined navigation skills? Any time I ever get into a car with my parents, it's as if they're hell bent on not following my GPS's directions.
In EQ, you had to learn to socialize and to make friends in order to make it through the game unlike in WoW where you can basically solo to the level cap. How is that different from a face-to-face conversation, handwritten letter, or telephone call vs an email or a text message? In both instances, you're not having to exercise near the amount of social skills to get what you want.
Are you arguing that the older generation doesn't find a sense of pride in the way they lived vs the way we live today? It's not that horses and wagons and such were that great because they sure made life more difficult. That's the point though. People who lived in that era feel better about themselves having faced those challenges versus having the modern conveniences of today.
These are all real life examples of modern conveniences. Similarly, video games have a lot of modern conveniences. I think a lot of what makes people perceive oldschool games to be so difficult are antiquated design decisions and not so much the difficulty of the actual content.
What is interesting to me; however, is the real disconnect between how people view challenge in real life and how people view challenge in a video game. No one finds walking everywhere very fun in real life yet people here always moan about how fast travel ruins video games. We complain about how modern MMORPGs fail to promote social interaction, yet most of us couldn't imagine actually driving to a store to pick up a PC game, where we'd actually have to interact with the cashier. People complain how video games are too easy and how gamers no longer have to work for anything, yet I doubt many of the complainers have real life PhDs in electrical engineering if they even have college degrees.
Why then do gamers enjoy being faced with pixelated challengers yet shy away from any real life challenges?
You are right. Just for shits and giggles though please tell me everyone in your phone's number without actually looking at it. In my day we KNEW people's phone numbers by heart.
"I am not in a server with Gankers...THEY ARE IN A SERVER WITH ME!!!"
i think its funny that you posted this based off what was in red.considering blizzard is well known for tweaking things based off casual complaints.i was laughing hard at there "challenge"mode in mop,i bet the challenge will be how long the stuff will stay hard until they cave to the sobbing casual crybabys and nerf it
but whatever,i could care less anyway.i quit wow months ago and i dont plan on returning for mop
I know people of ALL ages who don't remember phone numbers by heart anymore.
... just like you don't know people who know how to use slide rules anymore... and even in China, the amount of people who can use an abacus? Shamefully declining.
... and the fine art of manuscript copying by hand as practiced by monks is pretty much shot to hell.
... and do you know what percentage of people know how to chip flint tools?
Outdated skills are... well, outdated. People tell themselves outdated skills (Like memorizing all your phone contacts by heart) were useful, because nobody likes to admit they possess skills that are useful as knowing how to braid buggy whips.
(Though braiding buggy whips STILl more useful than being good at video games from the 80s. Just saying.
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You just now realized?
I feel like myself and many others would enjoy a game, or games even, aimed at the traditional and dare I say, classic? gaming audience. I refrain from just saying MMO audience given the magnitude of the simplifying of games and gaming.
Aiming at a more traditional audience, I of course mean a harder game, a more challenging game, that gets you involved and to do things, as opposed to doing things for you and you just being on there for a ride. Players will do just perfectly fine reading and learning where to run to, rather than being shown on several map and pointer features the exact point of the next location of their current task.
I am envious of the people who used paper based maps in old adventure games. I want to go back in time to that era. I'm saddened that I was born to a generation that skipped on the old school goodness, and have forever been searching for some.
Currently hapily playing Neverwinter Nights. Wheeee.
Well, i'm 20 so i'm don't have the best judgement
. But, i believe what's happening is conviniece. Now, IMO, making things easier isn't necessarily a bad thing. Giving a "break" to players doesn't mean dumbing down. If i'm correct, one of earliest Super Mario games didn't have a save options, which meant going back over and over and over. Allowing saves isn't that much of a big deal.
What i think as happened is that in the effort to not stress out the players, everything as been made too easy. What probably happened was that games in general went from unforgiving and hardcore to extreme convinience and easy mode. Finding a balance is the key. Death penalties for example. Nowadays, they don't even exist, just a mindless reaspawn, but having an actually punishement for defeat doesn't have to mean "hardcore mode on."
I don't. I was there. It was a pain in the ass. I remember the first Might & magic, and uncountable number of graph papers for the map. It is not hard to map .. how hard can it be? Just note down the walls. But it is horribly boring & tedious.
Older != better. It is not old school goodness .... it is old school boredem.
And .. if you like mapping so much, just turn off the auto-map or don't look at it.
I always LOL at the people who think that doing everythign by hand is superior and fun. Heck, even Ultima 6 provides a CLOTH MAP so that you don't have to map stuff out yourself.
I don't play games to be a cartologist. It is a boring job.
Skyrim gave me a paper map. Someone out there is obviously still catering to us cartographers.
Enter a whole new realm of challenge and adventure.
Haha I remember those games, me I wasnt into many of them, X-wing, Tie Fighter, Wing Commander and Rogue Spear. You brought back a image of my college roomate making his own maps on graph paper for the dungeons. Now they draw it on the map for you and point a arrow to your next waypoint. They even make it glow and practically say hey click here to continue on your quest.
Sometimes I miss it but Im only remembering the good and not the rage cussing. Maybe they just need to make more secret content to make us old gamers happy.
I like trinkets though. I still have my Ultima 6 map hung on the wall behind my computer desk. I bought the collector's edition, which also gives me the rune stone that teleport me to Britainnia.
I couldn't agree more with that statement.
I'm 32, started playing video games on my grandpas commodore 64 (Dragon Wars & Wasteland FTW) and truly miss the difficulty that came with the classics.
I somewhat disagree. I was born in 89, first game I played was commander keen and duke nukem on the pc and contra on the nes. Games back then were simple like a previous poster said. They were straight up related to the skill of your hand eye coordination and there was never much thought at all put into them.
Now take a modern game like, say any modern shooter. Yeah you could agrue they are just as mindless and based on reflex....buuuuut, they are so much more complex and there are more things to process. For example, I'll take Battlefield 3. It's more of a mind game, to survive. To be good at it, you have to survive while completeing objectives(capture points, gain kills, destroy coms, etc). Now difficulty is....difficult...to see in a game like this though because the experience will always be relative to the player's committment and involvement. To me, dying in BF3 means I failed, I let my gaurd down. To others, dying means a 5 second respawn to jump back into the game and do it again. It's all relative to the player.
To be a good player, you have to study yout surroundings, be aware, study your opposing team, find their weakest player and strongest player, find a path of least resistance where you will always come out on top...well it is a lot like real life and try to survive. Hah, barely anyone plays that way. They spawn, run out, die, spawn, run out, die.
The difficulty in games hasn't really declined, it's just more of the intense harsh rules of old games that make new games seem easy to "beat". Playing through Contra for example, your eyes are glued to the screen and your hands are getting sweaty because you know if you blink you're gonna die and if you're out of lives, it is gg and you start from the beginning. That mindset is less and less brought out in games today because, well to appeal to a larger audience, games have to be fun for everyone of all skill levels.
Originally posted by Arskaaa
"when players learned tacticks in dungeon/raids, its bread".
A lot of the truly dedicated developers out there must feel torn really because they have these visions and dreams they want to make a reality...or I should say virtual reality BUT they also need to make a living off it. So there is a huge conflict of interest there.
Originally posted by Arskaaa
"when players learned tacticks in dungeon/raids, its bread".
Cartophiles aren't necessarily the same demopgrahic as cartographers.
One likes maps. The second likes making maps.
Skyrim has a minimap and a map, so it doesn't appeal to cartographers directly.
I don't think I would say it could never be fun, but in most of my games I definitely don't want to waste a bunch of time creating the map for it just because the game couldn't be bothered to put in a minimap.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver