I cant even get friends to watch a 3 minute youtube video because everyone is so "busy".....This is why the games are catering to the "I dont have any time and I want immediate results" player.
Most people forget that the most challenging thing of the MMOs of old was to actually find certain raid bosses alive, because bigger clans farmed those on schedule....
Either that, or being on the lookout to not get raid stolen. That's all...Nothing was hard, it just required lots of time and obscene amount of people with the same mindset.
I'm glad those games are thing of the history books. They served their purpose.
I think it is more that people are overestimating the hardness of the older games.
Levels were not nearly as slow as people make them out to be. I have seen recent games where the leveling is slower than it was back in say everquest when it was new. Even the heck levels which were double or triple normal I managed to do in single days just because I wanted to get them over with. The hardest levels were actually the short levels right after them where if you died you lost a ton of exp.
Sure a griffon or a giant could kill you. How often did it though? Far FAR more close calls happened than actual deaths.
I don't necessarily like the games to be easy, just balanced for the average player. Needing to repeat content you failed at is never as much fun as moving on to do new content.
The only thing repeated wipes in group content is good for is for creating drama.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
Most people forget that the most challenging thing of the MMOs of old was to actually find certain raid bosses alive, because bigger clans farmed those on schedule....
Either that, or being on the lookout to not get raid stolen. That's all...Nothing was hard, it just required lots of time and obscene amount of people with the same mindset.
I'm glad those games are thing of the history books. They served their purpose.
In all fairness that is hard to accomplish. You need some dedicated people all working together. Staying alert for long periods of time is also difficult. It can be very taxing on a person. I'm not a huge fan of doing those type of activities, but I can respect the people who are willing to do it. It also adds a feeling of meaning to the game.
Games haven't gotten easier. They've gotten more fun.
Come on, OP. Give me your best example of a "challenging" game. Because EVE for example isn't challenging at all. It's inconvenient in the way that you can lose everything in 1 wrong move. That's not challenging, that's bullshit. Learning curve? Bullshit, play it for a month and you've seen everything.
Early MMOs? Where you had to grind a week for 1% of experience? Yeah no thanks. I'd rather do the "easy" shit from today's MMOs than repeating the same bullshit mob trains for hours on end and have all my week's effort gone in a single death.
What's challenging about Lineage 2? Get the best gear (used to take up to a year to reach the endgame players, atm i think it's longer) and go to PvP and steamroll everyone just by clicking autoattack, it's okay, your gear can tank everything they have to offer. Luck out and get everything enchanted to +6 or more and then even others with BiS can't kill you. Is this your idea of "challenging"? Really?
Or do you miss the 40-50-man raids (like early Antharas in Lineage 2)? WildStar has that. But then y'all complain that telegraphing is too much Q_Q
You did this yourselves.
And no, games are not easier. They are more accessible in the sense that you don't need a freaking 10-man group that is highly specific (having buffers healers 2 tanks and dps), most of MMOs of today are designed around the solo player and small scale group content
you know, so I don't have to beg you morons to free up 1-2 hours of your precious time and have one of you not show up and ruin the whole fucking thing that has been planned for a fucking week.
Challenging my ass. Annoying tho ... definitely.
I'm sorry you are a masochist and can't enjoy a good game.
You want challenging? Go try Guild Wars 2's raids. Too easy? Go with a suboptimal group. Those are some of the finest fights the current MMO generation of games has to offer.
All you people shouting for more "challenging" MMOs are scrubs with lots of free time and you want a game where time invested = power gained and you believe that you deserve to stomp everyone just because you invested more time. Devs tried that, it didn't work. Move on. Git gut.
Look at this guy: - A tank in BiS gear smashing hundreds of people in in medium grade gear. It must've been so challenging ....
I've never done GW2 raids because the combat put me to sleep, might go back and try it again though.
Other than that I can agree with everything you said and have the experience with all of them to verify it.
Some mmorpg's do have a challenging dungeon or two as their "end game". But they stuff so much mind numbingly easy content in front of it that you get bored and quit long before you ever get there.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own. -- Herman Melville
Has anyone provided any evidence of this so called popularity of easy games? I look at top game lists for 2016 games and see PvP games, RPGs and other games that require time investment, Dark Souls 3, a game known for it's difficulty. Sure Dota games are short, but my friends that play I see in game for hours on STeam. Surely there will be a SWTOR thread with someone complaining about how easy the game got, with thousands of replies saying how that it's better that way, right? I know mobile games are known for short spurt play, but that's the whole idea of mobile games, right? And a lot of people who play mobile games aren't what you'd call "gamers". The most casual of gamers for sure.
I think it's for the people that enjoy playing MMOs but don't have the time to play much. Lots of casual gamers for that reason.
Please explain why time spent in a game and it's difficulty have in common. That you need to kill fewer mobs to level is not the same thing as the game becoming easier, just less time consuming. Or do you mean that people play so badly it would take them a long time of training to be able to handle harder content?
I don't necessarily like the games to be easy, just balanced for the average player. Needing to repeat content you failed at is never as much fun as moving on to do new content.
The only thing repeated wipes in group content is good for is for creating drama.
Unless the average player is a chimp they have taken that too far. When it is almost impossible to die in the open world things are far more boring then if I wipe a few times. How is it fun if skill really doesn't have anything at all to do with things before the endgame?
That makes leveling a long and boring tutorial that uses 75% of the games resources.
It is certainly not fun constantly dying in a MMO but never dying until max level even if you don't really concentrate makes the entire game pointless, at least until you finally get to a few harder dungeons and raids.
I guess you could play it for the story but to be honest do most MMO story content suck. Most games have a few gems but the main MMO story is just about the reason you yet again need to kill 10 of something.
I think at least 75% of my leveling up deaths the last 5 years is due to me falling off stuff, the rest is a mix of something real world disturbing me and me bored pulling everything in sight to at least get something to fight. and the time I got to max in my starting gear, died some times there as well. And I am not saying I play that well, most of you probably have a similar experience, any open world content is insanely easy in most MMOs.
And this is the reason I back Pantheon, or part of it at least. I want a MMO that challenge me as soon as I figure out the basics. It doesn't have to be insanely hard, just enough to get my blood pumping at times.
Has anyone provided any evidence of this so called popularity of easy games? I look at top game lists for 2016 games and see PvP games, RPGs and other games that require time investment, Dark Souls 3, a game known for it's difficulty. Sure Dota games are short, but my friends that play I see in game for hours on STeam. Surely there will be a SWTOR thread with someone complaining about how easy the game got, with thousands of replies saying how that it's better that way, right? I know mobile games are known for short spurt play, but that's the whole idea of mobile games, right? And a lot of people who play mobile games aren't what you'd call "gamers". The most casual of gamers for sure.
Well, it was popular 10 years ago, most top games that weren't PvP at least then were of the easier kind.
Today, I have my doubt as well but since MMOs that became easier got more players 2007 the devs seems to think that if they make it even easier they get more and more players. But MMOs becomes easier and easier and the players seems to be leaving more and more. MMOs probably were too hard at one time but that doesn't mean that making them so easy that my cat can play them (well, he is good at randomly hit keys when I don't expect it) is a good idea.
Dark souls is not the only game that increase the difficulty with good result.
For me, I like a game with a choice of easy content, medium content or hard content. It's achieving the hard content that gives me the satisfaction, but I am time poor now and sometimes just log-in and chill, doing the easy stuff to keep me satisfied. With a growing business, two kids and a wife who works full-time, there's load to be doing away from gaming, so sometimes I can only grab an hour and as has been said, I don't want to play for an hour and achieve nothing at all i.e. be at the same point in the game before I logged in.
Can someone please link all these posts or articles or something to where there are a players wanting their games easy. I see people bitching all the time about people supposedly wanting easier gameplay. I also see a lot of people give their theories as if they know the inner psyche of these supposed people who are complaining. However, I have yet to actually see someone say they want easier games. Am I the only one who finds these threads odd?
Your right, no one is asking for easy........I've never seen such a large group of people wrong other than here...... People here are under the impression that people like easy !
weird subject to be honest as the majority of players of MMORPGs are what you could say aren't very good at the game be it for whatever reason and then use that as reason to complain.
RAID ENVIRONMENT STUFF
I consider myself a fast learner, good at mechanics, rotation, getting the most out of my character skills and wanting to push myself each raid day.
I've been anywhere from 97-100 percentile during my time playing FFXIV in heavensward raiding. The game has been going easier and easier each raid. First raid in the expansion you would be having to have all 8 people play around 60-75% of their characters potential to clear content.
Now 2 raids later, people can be playing at 20-25% and clear the most difficult content in the game. The latest Q&A for this game even had the lead developer saying first raid was too hard and now we like the difficulty.
The problem isn't the games becoming easier. That's a side effect of people being lazier, not wanting to read, learn or maximise the potential of their character and then complaining on official forums, reddit and even ingame that things are too difficult.
The hardest raids in FFXIV Heavensward did not contain any extra story, they were there for the people that enjoyed challenge to do. but apparently because it's content X player cannot clear, it's apparently unfair.
There is a difference between challenging and tedious. Take Fallout 4 for instance. Survival mode is challenging and tedious. Hard mode is just tedious. A long time ago game developers figured out that if you add a 0 to the end of a monsters HP, they become harder. In the age of raids I think its clear that adding a 0 to a monsters HP just made it more time consuming and repetitive.
I think the way forward with good combat in mmos is by having longer more meaningful engagements. Things like no HP regen, limited equipment/items in the field, switching combat styles for different enemies, and combo effects that occur when an event happens.
There are a lot more entertainment sources competing for players' time than there used to be.
I once camped a rare spawn for my epic in Everquest for 2.5 real life days. I didn't own a smartphone then. Or Netflix. And there weren't a zillion mmorpgs available - just a few.
I'm pretty sure I would not be up for a camp spawn that long anymore.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
I'm curious as to why we have seen a huge surge in this type of player over the years? I'm not talking about people's lack of time, and games designed to be played in chunks either, because I think you can have challenging game play in small bursts. I'm referring to the bulk of MMOs these days that are designed from the ground up to just to be a faceroll in order to cater to this type of gamer. I'm not trying to be mean here, I'm just genuinely curious as to why people like content to be this easy?
that way they don't need to talk with *shivers* people
I'd believe that the 'aging MMORPG population' should be at least considered as a factor here. We don't see many young folk asking their parents for the latest expansion pack for an online game for their birthday. With the newer generation moving for simple task-managing hardware like smart technology, it's safe to assume so would the market. Our reality is simply changing just like time before us had as well... and just like every other generation, we're just not content with these changes because they don't benefit us specifically. That's my perspective on this problem, anyways.
Comments
This video explains it a lot better.
Maybe ESO too, not as much though.
So then you're not talking about easy as in difficulty? We're talking about creating more complex mechanics? Easy = simple mechanics?
Crazkanuk
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Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
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Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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Either that, or being on the lookout to not get raid stolen. That's all...Nothing was hard, it just required lots of time and obscene amount of people with the same mindset.
I'm glad those games are thing of the history books. They served their purpose.
Levels were not nearly as slow as people make them out to be. I have seen recent games where the leveling is slower than it was back in say everquest when it was new. Even the heck levels which were double or triple normal I managed to do in single days just because I wanted to get them over with. The hardest levels were actually the short levels right after them where if you died you lost a ton of exp.
Sure a griffon or a giant could kill you. How often did it though? Far FAR more close calls happened than actual deaths.
The only thing repeated wipes in group content is good for is for creating drama.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
I've never done GW2 raids because the combat put me to sleep, might go back and try it again though.
Other than that I can agree with everything you said and have the experience with all of them to verify it.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
-- Herman Melville
Surely there will be a SWTOR thread with someone complaining about how easy the game got, with thousands of replies saying how that it's better that way, right?
I know mobile games are known for short spurt play, but that's the whole idea of mobile games, right? And a lot of people who play mobile games aren't what you'd call "gamers". The most casual of gamers for sure.
Unless the average player is a chimp they have taken that too far. When it is almost impossible to die in the open world things are far more boring then if I wipe a few times. How is it fun if skill really doesn't have anything at all to do with things before the endgame?
That makes leveling a long and boring tutorial that uses 75% of the games resources.
It is certainly not fun constantly dying in a MMO but never dying until max level even if you don't really concentrate makes the entire game pointless, at least until you finally get to a few harder dungeons and raids.
I guess you could play it for the story but to be honest do most MMO story content suck. Most games have a few gems but the main MMO story is just about the reason you yet again need to kill 10 of something.
I think at least 75% of my leveling up deaths the last 5 years is due to me falling off stuff, the rest is a mix of something real world disturbing me and me bored pulling everything in sight to at least get something to fight. and the time I got to max in my starting gear, died some times there as well. And I am not saying I play that well, most of you probably have a similar experience, any open world content is insanely easy in most MMOs.
And this is the reason I back Pantheon, or part of it at least. I want a MMO that challenge me as soon as I figure out the basics. It doesn't have to be insanely hard, just enough to get my blood pumping at times.
Today, I have my doubt as well but since MMOs that became easier got more players 2007 the devs seems to think that if they make it even easier they get more and more players. But MMOs becomes easier and easier and the players seems to be leaving more and more. MMOs probably were too hard at one time but that doesn't mean that making them so easy that my cat can play them (well, he is good at randomly hit keys when I don't expect it) is a good idea.
Dark souls is not the only game that increase the difficulty with good result.
Your right, no one is asking for easy........I've never seen such a large group of people wrong other than here...... People here are under the impression that people like easy !
RAID ENVIRONMENT STUFF
I consider myself a fast learner, good at mechanics, rotation, getting the most out of my character skills and wanting to push myself each raid day.
I've been anywhere from 97-100 percentile during my time playing FFXIV in heavensward raiding. The game has been going easier and easier each raid. First raid in the expansion you would be having to have all 8 people play around 60-75% of their characters potential to clear content.
Now 2 raids later, people can be playing at 20-25% and clear the most difficult content in the game. The latest Q&A for this game even had the lead developer saying first raid was too hard and now we like the difficulty.
The problem isn't the games becoming easier. That's a side effect of people being lazier, not wanting to read, learn or maximise the potential of their character and then complaining on official forums, reddit and even ingame that things are too difficult.
The hardest raids in FFXIV Heavensward did not contain any extra story, they were there for the people that enjoyed challenge to do. but apparently because it's content X player cannot clear, it's apparently unfair.
I think the way forward with good combat in mmos is by having longer more meaningful engagements. Things like no HP regen, limited equipment/items in the field, switching combat styles for different enemies, and combo effects that occur when an event happens.
Sounds like a fallacy to me. Why assume that *I* want my games easy? I don't.
At last pose interesting questions, please.
Game devs just suck.
I once camped a rare spawn for my epic in Everquest for 2.5 real life days. I didn't own a smartphone then. Or Netflix. And there weren't a zillion mmorpgs available - just a few.
I'm pretty sure I would not be up for a camp spawn that long anymore.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests