Character progression is actually what keeps me from playing Elder Scrolls Online. I never feel like there's any sense of progression at all since you can just go wherever you want and things are scaled to you, same with GW2.
I appreciate the directive path that other MMORPGs offer, I just wish you could remove some of the arbitrary repetition. Again, you shouldn't have to wade through 75 quests to progress though outdated content when you could just as easily increase the experience so it can be done via the 30 that actually tell/advance the story.
This was in fact why I liked GW2, because I felt like I was progressing up, as I leveled I opened up new zones and content that I could do.
But at the same time, unlike so many other MMO's my world did not shrink, I did not get bottlenecked into the "End Game" as it where, All the Content remained open to me to play in, I could stomp around Iron Marches (level 40) looking for Platinum even at 80th, and have fun. I could go run off and do a Jormag (Level80), and then do a Fire Elemental (Level 10), and I didn't have to leave the content behind.
Another cool aspect of GW2, was Leveling Tomes, which you start to collect massive amounts of once you get to 80th, so that if at some point you want to level an Alt or 6., it's a simple matter of using the Tomes you have collected to do it.
Egotism is the anesthetic that dullens the pain of stupidity, this is why when I try to beat my head against the stupidity of other people, I only hurt myself.
I bought Terror Dungeon last night. It is 150 levels worth of mind-bending horror.
The first thing I did upon logging on is head on over to the in-game store and buy all 150 levels along with requisite gear.
Upon having completed the game I logged out and uninstalled.
Download Time: 3hrs. Total Play Time: 5 minutes.
I give the game a 10/10.
Perfectly understandable since I'm sure you're a very busy person with many responsibilities to take care of and with so many games out these days there just isn't enough time to play them all.
It's only no-lifers that have the time to fully play games. Why should you be left out?
"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
There's not a AAA mmo on the market that I know of, please correct me if I am wrong, not ESO / WoW / GW2 / EQ2 / EQ1, none of the major MMO's allow you to create an END GAME character. They simply allow you to create a character ready to START the current expansion,
Now I'm literally puzzled... either it's the different mindsets again, or just moving the goal posts and different interpretations of "end game", any way I'm lost again.
Of course character boost only gets you to the start of the endgame content, that's obvious... didn't even think it needs to be mentioned, since all along the discussion I believed that's what you're after: to bypass the "bloat" of the game and start the endgame, a.k.a. the lastly added content.
If that's not the case, and apparently not, based on that reply ("Take me to the final boss encounter on Dark Souls the second I load the game if I choose."), well... I have to agree with Ungood.
Hate to say it, since I welcome all playstyles and players usually, but if you really mean by endgame to literally jump right at the very end of the game, fully geared, statted and everything ready to dive into the top grind, even as a brand new player... then maybe MMORPGs are not the droids you're looking for.
(I'm actually ashamed to say that, probably never did before, at least as far as I can remember...it's a first. Usually MMORPGs are a good fit for all kinda different playstyles and goals.)
With every game now adopting the open world without also including the necessary social aspects a MMORPG often demands, players who are anti-social want a path to play and learn before they're forced to join other players who are going to scream at them for not knowing what they are doing already. A problem Final Fantasy XIV suffers from regularly, because people leveling their 12th job are paired up with brand new players running a dungeon for the first time, and instead of teaching/helping, they rage and complain.
I haven't played FFXIV in the last couple years, but that sounds like a community issue to me, and not content or game design issue.
And if those new players could advance faster due to the 75 quests were reduced to 30 as you said, you think they'd be better in dungeons during their first run? Or maybe that way the veterans on their 12th job wouldn't rage and complain?
Fail to see how could that be the solution, but maybe just I'm the short-sighted one.
If you masochists' truly do love crash dieting and running all the time... Why would you ever stop playing say diablo 3? It literally goes forever, there is no end to how powerful your character can become...
You're missing the point entirely, what many in this thread tried to tell: it ain't about chasing to be powerful, not at all.
But what you said, both above and to Ungood as well, was actually insightful and explained a lot.
So basically you like endgame pvp (preferably moba-esque), endgame raid, always disliked everything else leading up to those two, and either got some bypass, or had to grind through and you hated that.
Also your dream game would be a moba-like pvp (small-scaled group play, pre-balanced, relatively short rounds),
raids (relatively small-scaled group play, no gear dependency, easy access),
and a creator mode for the two above.
Nothing above there needs anything from MMORPGs, no surprise you want to skip all the games contain...
What you really seek is simply an online game, unfortunately there's nothing on the market offering those three features at the same time - at least yet.
Looking at the directions, the rise of the quasi-MMOs, maybe someone will combine a moba with a raid mode (with those pre-made characters) and a creator.
Until then, you're stucked with MMORPGs... and the horrid 3 weeks long "grind" to reach your fun at the end of the game.
When I was a kid, I would wake up on Saturday mornings, my dad would be in the living room on the computer playing UO. He would have spent the entire morning on the then test server, getting a vanquishing halberd from the item generator that randomly gave you items you had to identify and eventually you'd have a vanq weapon.
He'd have gathered off other dead people like 300 of each reagent needed to cast spells.
Essentially, I would wake up to a fully maxed out character with all the work done for me. I would then proceed to run around PVPing. I would get into long epic sieges with fellow faction members and would get into duels etc. Eventually, I'd die and lose it all and would be like meh and I'd move on to something else.
But, I did play UO on live servers also. Where I would spend hours and hours and hours in deceit killing skeletons or liches to afford reagents to be able to level my magery and other skills. Eventually I made a 7x GM, a friend I met helped me figure out how to exploit blade spirits and energy fields to use them to max my resist etc. But, I hated that grind, it was very annoying.
What I LOVED was running through deceit and blowing people up with that super powerful character, getting into duels, and eventually it did fizzle out, I moved on to other games.
Asheron's Call, I couldn't stand the terrible terrible grind, having to grind olthoi and dredges or those monkey things for years just hell no, miss me with that. So, I used my brothers character that he bought. It was crappy, wrong speced, and I dueled with it anyway. I got owned a lot because my character was ass compared to the guys I was fighting and it pissed me off.
EQ1, I LOVED the dungeons. I loved playing an enchanter and being responsible for keeping the group alive through crowd control, being needed to make a party work. But, I got bored after months of just grinding and grinding and never even getting close to the level cap or being able to see the really awesome end game.
DAOC, I hated the game to begin with, but when Mordred finally released and my brother figured out how to use a necromancer + cleric buff bot to power level characters? I spent weeks powerleveling almost every class in the game. I then spent months working with my guild to try and do the ML's and Artifacts necessary to make templates, but I was never able to really pvp on anything but my one well equipped character because the grind was so harsh.
Later I moved to classic when it came out and removed most of the grind, we hit level cap in 2 days of playing as a group and proceeded to absolutely annihilate the server in rvr. We were a hib bomb group that at one point killed over 100 mid players in 1 siege.
After that... WoW came out. Again, I hated the grind. I almost quit at level 50 but a friend convinced me to keep going cause the "raiding was worth it". I hit 60 on my shaman, got invited to my first zul grub raid and I was hooked. I LOVED being part of a coordinated team having to do a difficult encounter, wiping again and again and again then FINALLY executing it perfectly and beating it. Watching us go from struggling on entry raid bosses to beating Hakkar, clearing to the last couple of bosses in Molten Core etc.
I always looked up to the guys that were at the cutting edge, they were decked out in full T3 gear when I was still wearing T1 gear. Pvping was a joke because of this, so I hated the pvp, but I loved raiding. I kept raiding all the way through to present because that experience, alone, without the gear or the grind... Is fun! I don't care if my character is in greens if I can down the boss with my friends, especially if it's really tough and takes us a long time to get it, I like it all the more.
If you could take the PVP of a moba, combine it with non-gear based raiding, and give it a player dungeon creation editor too... I'd be in heaven.
Ok.
Well first off, I think we have made progress that it is not an MMO you want to play, so that's good.
With that said, moving on to your continual desire for player made content, UGC (User Generated Content?), well that is not a new idea, and sadly the major games that tried to incorporate player made dungeon content has made it clear that is was a failure and that it takes more work to check and moderate player made dungeons then it does to just hire devs to make the content professionally. This was said in no uncertain terms by Cryptic directly, who had made 2 games with the focus on player made dungeons.
So I don't think that dream will ever manifest again anytime soon, and I legitimately feel bad for you, that you missed the boat when Neverwinter had an active foundry, it might have been very cathartic for you to have experienced it.
This is not the same as Voxel based games, like Minecraft, which can be found in other active MMO's like Trove, Boundless, and Creativerse, etc. but the players ability to modify the open world is such that they can't do too much damage or skew the way the game is played. But I know in Trove, a player can submit Dungeon designs to the Company, as well as other player designed things, like weapons, face masks, hats, etc. but I don't think that is what you are looking for.
With all that said, there are in fact quite a few MOBA/BR's makers have put in PvE content. IIRC, Fortnight advertised a Co-Op PvE survival mode, where you and your friends could face off against hordes of Zombies.
Eternal Crusade has Hive Missions.
And a relative new game, called Unfortunate Spacemen (a 3d Among Us rip off) has both PvE Story and Invasion Missions.
So that Dream of a PvP game with PvE dungeons/missions is already manifest.
So, at the end of the day, what you really want is an Basic PvP Game, with all the horizontal aspects that go with it, that has some PvE missions as well, and that already exist, so you might want to look into them to find that perfect itch to scratch, as opposed to trying to make a huge fuss about twisting some other game into something that it was never meant to be nor will it ever work for you.
So as others and myself have said already, You're pursuing the wrong platform for your dreams.
Egotism is the anesthetic that dullens the pain of stupidity, this is why when I try to beat my head against the stupidity of other people, I only hurt myself.
But, I am still curious what YOU find enjoyable about current day MMO's. What do you play MMO's for? How would you describe it, if not a masochistic treadmill? What Major MMO titles do you regularly engage with and enjoy and why? I legit want to know, I like to understand different perspectives, feel free to go on a long explanation, I'll read it.
It's like taking a drive.
Some people can only think about getting to their destination, and hate everything in-between and want it over and done with as fast as possible.
Other people enjoy the journey. They enjoy the Trip itself, the sights they pass, the music on the radio, who they are with, all of it makes for a grand experience getting to the destination.
It's just that simple.
Not a hard thing to grasp.
Egotism is the anesthetic that dullens the pain of stupidity, this is why when I try to beat my head against the stupidity of other people, I only hurt myself.
At first, I thought this would be an interesting reading that I'd likely relate to. But I can't get behind the theory that "playing to level 20 often gives you the gist of what to expect", especially since you mentioned Final Fantasy XIV. Honestly, I don't think that's true to any MMORPG at all.
When you reach level 20 on FFXIV, you're barely starting. Sure, maybe you'll be able to tell what role is supposed to do what, but as for the classes themselves, you won't be able to tell what makes each job different from the other. The job advancement itself only happens on level 30, and although it does introduce you to each class core mechanic, it's still arguably the experience you'll have on Stormblood and Shadowbringers (61~80). Most classes don't get a real rotation with unique CDs and weaving until around 50.
I think people care too much about how long it takes to level up instead of how fun and diversified the process is. For instance, it doesn't take that long to level up on Ragnarok Online, but the problem is the process isn't fun neither diversified. It's up to you to decide how you want to level up. The game only needs to give you several ways to do that and keep you from getting stuck in a boring process.
There's more I could say, but I've read other comments, and most of them cover the topic in a way I mostly agree to.
But, I am still curious what YOU find enjoyable about current day MMO's. What do you play MMO's for? How would you describe it, if not a masochistic treadmill? What Major MMO titles do you regularly engage with and enjoy and why? I legit want to know, I like to understand different perspectives, feel free to go on a long explanation, I'll read it.
It's like taking a drive.
Some people can only think about getting to their destination, and hate everything in-between and want it over and done with as fast as possible.
Other people enjoy the journey. They enjoy the Trip itself, the sights they pass, the music on the radio, who they are with, all of it makes for a grand experience getting to the destination.
It's just that simple.
Not a hard thing to grasp.
Well, I mean seriously, what specific games did you play and why did you play them? What memories can you recant to me that said, okay, this is what made my hair stand up, or made me realize oh crap it's 3 am and I have been up all day playing this game? I want to know, cause I want to be able to relate.
When I was going through the process of losing 200lbs in real life, I was never thinking to myself, man this journey is amazing. I can't wait to go back to the gym and do 100 reps of each machine, and completely give up any and all of the food I enjoyed for so long that got me to over 400 lbs.
Now that I am 215, I look back and go, okay, I didn't have to be AS hardcore about that weight loss as I was, but I certainly do not enjoy running on a treadmill or doing a stair stepper for hours. I still don't "enjoy" the process of maintaining my weight, but I certainly enjoy being much more fit and active.
I enjoy being able to bend over and tie my shoes without having to sit down. I enjoy being able to run without having to stop after 20 seconds. I enjoy being able to flex in the mirror and see my hard work, but I never once enjoyed the process by which I lost the weight. So, I wanna know someone elses perspective on this.
Now see.
When I lost 68 pounds. I enjoyed talking with my wife about the calories in everything I ate, charting my calorie count by the day and by the week, to see where I was, when I went under, when I went over. It was a game of seeing if I could have that extra treat, or cheat day.
I also enjoyed going to the gym, I looked forward to seeing how far I could run, seeing by the days and weeks my mileage and speed on the treadmill increase.
I enjoy the lifting of the weights and it was almost a dance to me to put them back on the rack, looking at the other people in the gym, those that sifted through, those that came back, how they dressed, how they worked out.
I recall my 3rd week at the gym was when I finally got notice by the gym rats that I was "Sticking to it" and that little step of progress helped me along, helped me come back the next day, because I was.. enjoying that journey.
Sure, the 68 pounds was a good loss, and I felt great after, then I was in a terrible accident, shattered several bones all through my body, and gained roughly 110 pounds.. LOL.
But.. it was that journey, that looking forward to going to the guy each day, even placing the chunks of chicken on the scale to make sure that I was keeping things in budget, all of it, the routine, and the efforts to bust up the routine, where where the joy was for me.
Sorry you didn't enjoy the process, but I suppose that is what makes us different, I don't think I could have ever enjoy life with your outlook that the process sucks and only the end matters.
The process, the steps, the events, the life changes and little and big things, that's the joy, that's the journey, that's where Life exists... At least to people like me..
I am sure you have a totally different outlook, and truth be told, it does not appeal to me to learn about it. Nothing personal and no diss, just.. it's not my care.
You do You. More power to you.
Egotism is the anesthetic that dullens the pain of stupidity, this is why when I try to beat my head against the stupidity of other people, I only hurt myself.
Again, I think instead, people enjoy the so called journey, which is more or less experiencing something for the first time. After that, the experience has been consumed. You can't really re-read the same book and get the same amount of enjoyment out of it, you know the story, you know what happens.
Well, starting over in an older MMO is very similar to re-reading a book you've read several times. You're not wanting to re-read through a 12 book series, just to be able to experience the 13th book. Perhaps the first 12 books were completely boring to you, but the 13th sounds like a total riot.
Why wouldn't you want to allow people to read the synopsis of the first 12 books, then get right into the 13th book?
Allow players the ability to go to any book they want, at any time, and have their character capable of participating in that story? You can remove progression, without removing a journey. If you need a number and a bar that fills to express to you, your time investment in accomplishing something, I think you're playing for bragging rights and exploitation of power more than you are playing for the enjoyment of the content.
The problem is that "streamlining" removes most of the journey. Instead of having a lengthy journey to enjoy, you get a much shorter one and then you're out of content and it's time to quit.
If you want to allow people to skip the first 12 books in a series to jump straight to the 13th, that's fine. But don't take the first 12 books out of print so that no one can get access to them anymore, just as a way to rush people to the 13th.
The argument that repeating something a bunch of times gets boring applies to the endgame, too. Endgames tend to be extremely repetitive, which is why so many people hate them.
Again, I think instead, people enjoy the so called journey, which is more or less experiencing something for the first time. After that, the experience has been consumed. You can't really re-read the same book and get the same amount of enjoyment out of it, you know the story, you know what happens.
Well, starting over in an older MMO is very similar to re-reading a book you've read several times. You're not wanting to re-read through a 12 book series, just to be able to experience the 13th book. Perhaps the first 12 books were completely boring to you, but the 13th sounds like a total riot.
Why wouldn't you want to allow people to read the synopsis of the first 12 books, then get right into the 13th book?
Allow players the ability to go to any book they want, at any time, and have their character capable of participating in that story? You can remove progression, without removing a journey. If you need a number and a bar that fills to express to you, your time investment in accomplishing something, I think you're playing for bragging rights and exploitation of power more than you are playing for the enjoyment of the content.
The problem is that "streamlining" removes most of the journey. Instead of having a lengthy journey to enjoy, you get a much shorter one and then you're out of content and it's time to quit.
If you want to allow people to skip the first 12 books in a series to jump straight to the 13th, that's fine. But don't take the first 12 books out of print so that no one can get access to them anymore, just as a way to rush people to the 13th.
The argument that repeating something a bunch of times gets boring applies to the endgame, too. Endgames tend to be extremely repetitive, which is why so many people hate them.
I thought about this.
If you are dealing with a 13 book series, and you have someone that read all 13 books, vs someone who read the last page of the last book, in this situation, they both might be at "The End"
But the person that only read one page, should only reap the rewards of that One page, not all 13 books.
And I think that is the answer when someone asks "What does this take from you"
Well if I read the books, I would have a much deeper, richer, and better understanding of what the books where about, the characters, the world, everything would be far more in-depth to me, and this is the reward for reading all the books, that depth of whole story, that someone who read one page, simply could not get.
So that is what gets taken, that sense of fairness, that sense of reward for the time put in.
Egotism is the anesthetic that dullens the pain of stupidity, this is why when I try to beat my head against the stupidity of other people, I only hurt myself.
Quizzical said: That's because you didn't like the novel. You just wanted to get through the class that forced you to read a novel that you didn't like. You want shortened versions of things that you dislike so that you can skip doing them. If you dislike a game that you aren't required to play for school or a job, then the sensible thing to do isn't to ask for a shortened version that lets you skip most of it. It's to quit playing the game entirely and go find one that you like better.
This is a disingenuous argument to make. While the CliffsNotes comment was obviously a joke, at no point did I ever say I didn't like playing the game. What I said it is it becomes tedious to have to wade through an entirely far too deep of a pool in order to find the other players. I've physically seen less than 10 people in any zone outside of a city, and I'm currently level 70. Group content actually exists at the higher end of the level pool because that's where the majority of the player base is, so why would you punish me as a returning player or a new player to suffer alone in solitude for 10s or 100s of hours to simply catch up? The whole appeal of MMORPG is to PLAY WITH OTHER PEOPLE. That's why people buy level potions to instantly hit max level, so they can actually play with the player base.
I get what you're saying, but since every single game is trying to incorporate MMO elements into their games in order to succeed as a live service, the ginormous amount of content necessary to work through is a seemingly endless treadmill until you have actually done it and see places where shortcuts can exist. I can't tell you how many times I had to talk my friend who tried to play FFXIV with me into struggling and suffering to get through the patches from the Realm Reborn story to get to Heavensward (it's something like 154 quests), because he almost quit out of boredom 5 or 6 times alone. What I'm suggesting is that developers create a path to trim the fat, allowing players to experience what the game has to offer without keeping them locked off, and one that doesn't encourage microtransactions - so people can actually PLAY the game WITH the player base.
Have you played Diablo 3 since Seasons were introduced? People, on day one, are asking for powerleveling to 70 so they can start working on the season goals. Even new players do the exact same thing, because that's where the other players are. You can gatekeep all you want about games not catering to instant gratification, but these are games with dying player bases that deserve new infusions of life. You're continually avoiding everything about my fundamental argument with what-ifs. The middle of the game is too bloated. Players are either in the newbie levels because they are making new alts with the new players, or they are at the end game.
You can't seriously want to try to talk someone into avoiding a certain type of game for suggesting that old content can be condensed for a smoother and significantly quicker path to catch up, can you?
You're basically saying that you didn't like a broken version of the zone. The solution is to fix the zone, not to delete it.
A lot of games have deserted mid-level zones because they have a broken server architecture that insists that they must have exactly the same number of copies of every zone, even if ten times as many players play in one zone as another. If there are 100 people globally playing some particular level 70 zone and the game splits them across 20 servers so that no 10 of them are in the same instance of the zone, and 5 players per zone is too few, then that's a problem of a broken server architecture. Fix the server architecture. Don't delete the content.
Some games can't do that because they don't have enough of a playerbase to even keep one server filled. But if there is more than one instance of a zone and they're all deserted, that's because the company botched their server architecture.
You don't want to do any kind of progress content, you just want to start at the very max top end of everything?
Well for starters that devalues the whole point of actually playing the game to begin with, and defeats the very core foundation principal of earning what you have.
I mean why the hell even make content to start with if you are not going to give people a reason to play it, seems like a self defeating idea from the get-go.
In this vein, actually playing the game has been THE keynote in MMOs and MUDs since their inception, not to mention RPG games as a whole dating back all the way to the dawn of D&D where the goal was to play the game.
So your desire to not want to actually play the game at all boggles me, and I sincerely think MMO's and RPG in general are not the right platform for you.
That is like sitting down at the Gaming Table, and demanding that the GM to hand you a Max Level Character with all the best gear they could ever hope for, and that is when you expect to start playing, when there is nothing left for you to do.
So you will have to forgive me, if I simply cannot get my mind around that kind of approach to playing a game.
I play games to PLAY the game.
In some games the challenge is, you have a fixed set of gear and spells and level and whatever. Here's the content that you have to beat with it. See if you can do it. Guild Wars 1's endgame was pretty heavy on that. You get maxed out pretty quickly, and then just go play the game without having to worry about whether you're leveling fast enough to keep up with the Joneses.
Character progression is actually what keeps me from playing Elder Scrolls Online. I never feel like there's any sense of progression at all since you can just go wherever you want and things are scaled to you, same with GW2.
I appreciate the directive path that other MMORPGs offer, I just wish you could remove some of the arbitrary repetition. Again, you shouldn't have to wade through 75 quests to progress though outdated content when you could just as easily increase the experience so it can be done via the 30 that actually tell/advance the story.
This was in fact why I liked GW2, because I felt like I was progressing up, as I leveled I opened up new zones and content that I could do.
But at the same time, unlike so many other MMO's my world did not shrink, I did not get bottlenecked into the "End Game" as it where, All the Content remained open to me to play in, I could stomp around Iron Marches (level 40) looking for Platinum even at 80th, and have fun. I could go run off and do a Jormag (Level80), and then do a Fire Elemental (Level 10), and I didn't have to leave the content behind.
Another cool aspect of GW2, was Leveling Tomes, which you start to collect massive amounts of once you get to 80th, so that if at some point you want to level an Alt or 6., it's a simple matter of using the Tomes you have collected to do it.
The trouble with scaling the content to the players is that it usually results in scaling the content to be way too easy. The problem is that they have to make sure that no matter what your level and no matter what your gear, you can still beat it. If in the worst possible case, it's still doable, then in most of the rest, it's going to be way too easy to be interesting.
Without scaling content to players, they can have a backstop of, if something is too hard, you're not stuck. Just grind out another level or two elsewhere, then come back and it will be easier. But if grinding out another level or two elsewhere means that the content has now scaled up further and you still can't do it, that's no good. So they have to make it easier at all levels if you can't make it easier yourself by leveling past it.
This is why wow put in a raid finder, and I think an interactive tutorial that shows players the way the game is played is perfectly reasonable. It takes a couple hours to learn how the mechanics of the game works, in an interactive, identical but significantly easier way.
Think of it like a dark souls encounter, where your character is invulnerable, but you are shown your mistakes and why you would have died etc as you progress through the tutorial. Every game needs some kind of tutorial.
That isn't the same thing as asking someone to spend weeks grinding mindless content that actually doesn't teach you anything about the encounters or how their character would interact with others.
The problem is that lower level content in MMORPGs often isn't much of a tutorial. Rather, they make it so easy that you can be totally inept and still win. So to the extent that you're learning anything, it's that you're learning to play badly because it doesn't matter. If there is actually challenging content at the endgame, then you're unprepared when you get there because the "tutorial" taught you that you should play badly in ways that won't work in challenging content.
But, I am still curious what YOU find enjoyable about current day MMO's. What do you play MMO's for? How would you describe it, if not a masochistic treadmill? What Major MMO titles do you regularly engage with and enjoy and why? I legit want to know, I like to understand different perspectives, feel free to go on a long explanation, I'll read it.
It's like taking a drive.
Some people can only think about getting to their destination, and hate everything in-between and want it over and done with as fast as possible.
Other people enjoy the journey. They enjoy the Trip itself, the sights they pass, the music on the radio, who they are with, all of it makes for a grand experience getting to the destination.
It's just that simple.
Not a hard thing to grasp.
Well, I mean seriously, what specific games did you play and why did you play them? What memories can you recant to me that said, okay, this is what made my hair stand up, or made me realize oh crap it's 3 am and I have been up all day playing this game? I want to know, cause I want to be able to relate.
When I was going through the process of losing 200lbs in real life, I was never thinking to myself, man this journey is amazing. I can't wait to go back to the gym and do 100 reps of each machine, and completely give up any and all of the food I enjoyed for so long that got me to over 400 lbs.
Now that I am 215, I look back and go, okay, I didn't have to be AS hardcore about that weight loss as I was, but I certainly do not enjoy running on a treadmill or doing a stair stepper for hours. I still don't "enjoy" the process of maintaining my weight, but I certainly enjoy being much more fit and active.
I enjoy being able to bend over and tie my shoes without having to sit down. I enjoy being able to run without having to stop after 20 seconds. I enjoy being able to flex in the mirror and see my hard work, but I never once enjoyed the process by which I lost the weight. So, I wanna know someone elses perspective on this.
You didn't try to lose weight just for fun. If it had only been for entertainment and not offered any health benefits, then the sensible thing to do would be to stop and give up because it was miserable. I do play computer games just for fun. And I do expect computer games to be fun on the journey.
Character progression is actually what keeps me from playing Elder Scrolls Online. I never feel like there's any sense of progression at all since you can just go wherever you want and things are scaled to you, same with GW2.
I appreciate the directive path that other MMORPGs offer, I just wish you could remove some of the arbitrary repetition. Again, you shouldn't have to wade through 75 quests to progress though outdated content when you could just as easily increase the experience so it can be done via the 30 that actually tell/advance the story.
This was in fact why I liked GW2, because I felt like I was progressing up, as I leveled I opened up new zones and content that I could do.
But at the same time, unlike so many other MMO's my world did not shrink, I did not get bottlenecked into the "End Game" as it where, All the Content remained open to me to play in, I could stomp around Iron Marches (level 40) looking for Platinum even at 80th, and have fun. I could go run off and do a Jormag (Level80), and then do a Fire Elemental (Level 10), and I didn't have to leave the content behind.
Another cool aspect of GW2, was Leveling Tomes, which you start to collect massive amounts of once you get to 80th, so that if at some point you want to level an Alt or 6., it's a simple matter of using the Tomes you have collected to do it.
The trouble with scaling the content to the players is that it usually results in scaling the content to be way too easy. The problem is that they have to make sure that no matter what your level and no matter what your gear, you can still beat it. If in the worst possible case, it's still doable, then in most of the rest, it's going to be way too easy to be interesting.
Without scaling content to players, they can have a backstop of, if something is too hard, you're not stuck. Just grind out another level or two elsewhere, then come back and it will be easier. But if grinding out another level or two elsewhere means that the content has now scaled up further and you still can't do it, that's no good. So they have to make it easier at all levels if you can't make it easier yourself by leveling past it.
This is not exactly true with GW2.
There is a lot involved in the build itself and how it's set up, it's not simply a matter of go get +1 level and that makes you stronger and now you can do it.
This had become abundantly clear to Anet in their expansion content that is 80th level (Level cap), and HoT open world content was decimating their Casual player base.. but since you were max level... there was no where to go, you could not just go get +1 level.. so Now what?
Well, if the content is kicking your ass, and you are already maxed level, It's time to look at your gear set up, what your stats are, what weapons are you using, what combos are you laying down, what your trait lines are.. in short, it's time for an overhaul.
In this venture with GW2, there is a 10X DPS disparity between a weak build and a meta build running the proper rotations, this means, if you are playing a weak (Not directly grimped, but just poorly laid out, or unoptimized) build, and not using a good or ideal rotation of skills, your DPS can be as low as 1/10 what someone else could put out with a more optimized build doing proper rotations.
So in this case, it's not just a matter of being able to gain another level, you need to think about what your build is, and how you plan to make it work.
Egotism is the anesthetic that dullens the pain of stupidity, this is why when I try to beat my head against the stupidity of other people, I only hurt myself.
Correct, yes, thank you. I think we finally got on the same page. I do in fact want to combine those and if I had the money, I'd make it myself.
But, I am still curious what YOU find enjoyable about current day MMO's. What do you play MMO's for? How would you describe it, if not a masochistic treadmill? What Major MMO titles do you regularly engage with and enjoy and why? I legit want to know, I like to understand different perspectives, feel free to go on a long explanation, I'll read it.
Well, I'm a jaded "old" player from the MUD era, so I find nothing enjoyable in current day MMOs
Not only because of I don't play them (I prefer MMORPGs, and there's a distinction), but also because, as I used to joke about, my youngest game is 11 years old... (would be 8, if TSW wouldn't be dead).
What "major" titles, yep I wanted to address this earlier too, but the reply was already too long. (When you listed "not ESO / WoW / GW2 / EQ2 / EQ1, none of the major MMO's")
None of those. I'm a hopper, with main and secondary games I used to rotate, to avoid burning out.
My mains are AoC, LotRO and CO (used to be STO for a few years), and TSW was my main for the 5 years it was alive, same for Auto Assault back in '06-'07.
Secondary games, which I still play just occasionally and not on a fixed rotation, more like when the mood swings, are STO, SWTOR, DCUO, DDO.
Neverwinter was here for years, but the cancel of the Foundry, then the forced scaling at Mod16 steered me away from it.
I've also played almost everything else in the 2000s, just never stucked enough to stay or go back. AO, AC and EQ was fun for a while, FFXIV I've played through but wasn't in since years. Maybe it's time to check back...
To cover your list, EQ2 and WoW never were my favourites, ESO got the forced scaling with One Tamriel. I have a high level in GW2, loved the exploration and some of the puzzles, but eventually the scaling was too much for my taste.
As for what I enjoy, what do I play them for? That's easy, take the full opposite of yourself Everything, but the chase of power, the pvp, and the heavy endgame grind.
I play for the world, the story and lore, the social aspect/community, the crafting, the exploration, the different character ideas and themes, the build theory-crafting (not for chasing the power creep and the bestestest setup possible, but to find interesting or straight-out fun concepts), the sub-systems like housing or music, etc.
I sometimes do dungeons/raids, but not as the main goal, just to see the story and mechanics in them, and to have fun in there. (I don't "live around the raid calendar", and don't chase the drops).
I very rarely pvp, mostly just touch that aspect if there's anything interesting behind, like in LotRO there's an entire PvE section attached to it, with creep quests, a whole zone to explore, the strategic aspect, etc.
And setting wargs on fire with burning embers is a fun sight as well, I'm sure Wargfoot could tell a lot about that
At first, I thought this would be an interesting reading that I'd likely relate to. But I can't get behind the theory that "playing to level 20 often gives you the gist of what to expect", especially since you mentioned Final Fantasy XIV. Honestly, I don't think that's true to any MMORPG at all.
When you reach level 20 on FFXIV, you're barely starting. Sure, maybe you'll be able to tell what role is supposed to do what, but as for the classes themselves, you won't be able to tell what makes each job different from the other. The job advancement itself only happens on level 30, and although it does introduce you to each class core mechanic, it's still arguably the experience you'll have on Stormblood and Shadowbringers (61~80). Most classes don't get a real rotation with unique CDs and weaving until around 50.
I think people care too much about how long it takes to level up instead of how fun and diversified the process is. For instance, it doesn't take that long to level up on Ragnarok Online, but the problem is the process isn't fun neither diversified. It's up to you to decide how you want to level up. The game only needs to give you several ways to do that and keep you from getting stuck in a boring process.
There's more I could say, but I've read other comments, and most of them cover the topic in a way I mostly agree to.
Well, if the content is kicking your ass, and you are already maxed level, It's time to look at your gear set up, what your stats are, what weapons are you using, what combos are you laying down, what your trait lines are.. in short, it's time for an overhaul.
In this venture with GW2, there is a 10X DPS disparity between a weak build and a meta build running the proper rotations, this means, if you are playing a weak (Not directly grimped, but just poorly laid out, or unoptimized) build, and not using a good or ideal rotation of skills, your DPS can be as low as 1/10 what someone else could put out with a more optimized build doing proper rotations.
And then people bring the power creep from the expansions back to the initial content and make everything completely trivial, so you can't reasonably group with other players. But you can't avoid grouping with other players, either, because of how the game works. Which leaves most of the game in a broken state that isn't interesting to play. That's why, while a new player could pick up GW2 today, I wouldn't recommend it.
Well, if the content is kicking your ass, and you are already maxed level, It's time to look at your gear set up, what your stats are, what weapons are you using, what combos are you laying down, what your trait lines are.. in short, it's time for an overhaul.
In this venture with GW2, there is a 10X DPS disparity between a weak build and a meta build running the proper rotations, this means, if you are playing a weak (Not directly grimped, but just poorly laid out, or unoptimized) build, and not using a good or ideal rotation of skills, your DPS can be as low as 1/10 what someone else could put out with a more optimized build doing proper rotations.
And then people bring the power creep from the expansions back to the initial content and make everything completely trivial, so you can't reasonably group with other players. But you can't avoid grouping with other players, either, because of how the game works. Which leaves most of the game in a broken state that isn't interesting to play. That's why, while a new player could pick up GW2 today, I wouldn't recommend it.
The "Power Creep" was not introduced by the Expansions, it was always there from the start, it was simply not as abjectly noticeable in most content, but it was there, that was why they needed to scale back the difficulty in Orr from launch, because of how variable the power levels in builds could be.
When HoT launched, it was made to be a good hunting grounds for the more meta style builds, the meta CORE builds, but, this was very hard for their casual who did not get into making and playing Meta builds, and often just built what they thought would be fun to play.
As far as the power creep from expansions goes is nominal really.
The Level Cap has not Increased. So there no Direct Power Gap in that form.
The gear combs do not offer better stats, just different combos, (Some of which really suck), and Core Berserker Combo is still King for Power DPS.
The Elite Spec's don't offer any direct power ups, and often just offer more utility and variable ways to play.
So this illusion that there is some OMG the Expansions gave a massive Power Creep, is not true at all.
It's purely a matter of playing a well set up build vs playing a poorly set up build, you have many choices in GW2 on how you want to play, and unfortunately with being given the ability to make choices, you can make bad ones.
The upside of GW2, is that CORE is often easy enough that the bad choices are not as noticeable.
To use an example, I took a break from GW2 for a few years after HoT. I just came back like a month ago, to screw around and get a skyscale.
So, I join some guild and run a T4 fractal with them, and they are like "Umm dude, you're DPS is like bad, like real bad" and I am playing the old school rock solid Shout Guard from Metabattle from way back in 2012, so I am like "Ok, what do you mean?"
Well they link a new Guard Build for me from Metabattle.. a CORE Guard Build, so noting from the expansions, just your base Core Guard. All what I had to work from and with.
I click the "Activate this Build" button. I did not change my gear, or even my attack rotations.. my DPS went from 2.5K to 16K.. in the click of a button, just like that.
No Expansion needed power Creep, no needing the new stuff. just a simple update in how to maximize traits for DPS vs the Survival build I had originally.
Now sure, I could swap out my Knights for Zerker, and trooper runes for Scholar, maybe upgrade the simple AR infusions for Stat+AR infusions, and get another bump up in DPS. (Again, both of these are from Core) but.. meh.. fuck that.
So.. With that said, GW2 is super new player friendly, and you can get the expansions dirt cheap as well.
If you want to be optimal in GW2, you don't need anything special at all, it's as easy as looking up a build on Metabattle and following the recipe.
Case in point, I made a warrior to do strike missions with my guild because for some awful reason they love them. So, new character slot, tome the little shit up to 80th, Look up Warrior in Meta Battle, Banner Slave is the shizzle, so I slap some cheap ass exotics on and the suggested low rent runes, and My Warrior does around 33K DPS (with a burst that hit 60K According to my friend), as a brand new generic Banner Slave, wearing the basic cheap and easy to get equipment.
They work, I mean they do exactly what a banner slave warrior is supposed to do in that content, and their DPS is on par for the build they are running. I could get a little more DPS if upgraded to Ascended Weapons/Armor, and used +power infusions, but for what would amount to only a 4% overall gain, it was not worth the grind when I would rather do other things in game.
So.. the idea that GW2 has Power Creep, is not correct.
It's really a matter of "I wanna play my way" vs "Follow this Meta Recipe"
I like DDO's system much better, but GW2 is really forgiving to making some crap builds.
Egotism is the anesthetic that dullens the pain of stupidity, this is why when I try to beat my head against the stupidity of other people, I only hurt myself.
You didn't try to lose weight just for fun. If it had only been for entertainment and not offered any health benefits, then the sensible thing to do would be to stop and give up because it was miserable. I do play computer games just for fun. And I do expect computer games to be fun on the journey.
Absolutely, and I find challenging pvp or raiding content to be fun. Why should I not be allowed to do that content when I want to do it, instead of having to run on a treadmill for 12 weeks first?
Claiming that the treadmill IS the fun, is silly, because if that's true you wouldn't have pvp or raiding, the treadmill would be the whole point.
That's why I'm not saying to get rid of the raiding. I'm saying not to get rid of the lower level content, either. My proposal that was reply #32 on this thread would allow raiders to skip most of the leveling and get on with raiding, while keeping the lower level content in a good state for the people who want to do that.
Games can and should give both sides what they want. The problem right now is that a lot of games give neither side what they want. They make the lower level content awful (not what people who like lower level content want), then say that you have to do it anyway to reach the raiding (not what the raiders want).
I never post comments on here, but I disagree with your article so much I just had to comment.
As others have said here, some of us play games because we actually enjoy playing them. Not all of us want to speed through the leveling process at the blink of an eye just to get to end game. Some of us don't care about end game. Some of us actually enjoy the leveling process and revisiting the old zones and quests. You take those out and you will ruin the game for a lot of people.
Look at Cataclysm in World of Warcraft. That was one of Blizzard's huge mistakes, destroying the old world. There was so much backlash that now whenever a zone is changed due to story, you can go talk to an NPC in that zone to be taken back in time to see the zone and experience it as it once was. They now have sharding and phasing to help do this. I think they saw when they lost a lot of subscribers that removing content people loved sure wasn't the way to go. While I am not a fan of sharding, phasing and CRZ by any means in WoW, I do like what Blizzard did with giving us the option to experience the world changed from new content, and the ability to go back and experience it how it was before it changed due to story.
In my opinion, streamlining is what has ruined and is what continues to ruin mmorpg's. I have saw it happen to many of the games I once loved. And now you are asking for even more streamlining to games that have been streamlined so much they are a shell of what they once were.
So you asked in your article for thoughts and if we agree. As for me, I respectfully disagree with the whole article. If mmo's were to all do what you suggested in this article, it would ruin them for me and many others.
WoW, love i or hate it, Shadowlands pretty much solved the issue completely, pick the old content to level through, and the every two year reset prevents bloat.
"so when I tried World of Warcraft, it felt like I was being handed a paint-by-numbers game."
Love it! i usually go with Fisher Price or Easy Bake oven.
I'd argue ESO did it better. Because mobs always scale to your level (but not your "power level"; aka Gear Level). Every single zone/dungeon is viable for leveling, farming, or just killing time.
And with the cap on the mobs' "power", you still get the feeling you're getting stronger as you get higher power gear. Aaaand, since gear and leveling hasn't changed. You can do what I did, drop the game for 5 years and come back and there's zero "level [and/or] power hump" to get over to get back into the game.
((Imagine taking a break during, say, Cata, and coming back during BFA...yikes!))
Wish more MMOs would take this approach or not forcing players to feel like they have to keep playing or risk 'falling behind'.
Like, sure, it's great as a business model; you keep a steady stream of income. But all it leads to is burn out and people eventually leaving the game.
Then few return because "omg, all this content I'd have to clear".
Our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising everytime we fall.
If you masochists' truly do love crash dieting and running all the time... Why would you ever stop playing say diablo 3? It literally goes forever, there is no end to how powerful your character can become...
You're missing the point entirely, what many in this thread tried to tell: it ain't about chasing to be powerful, not at all.
But what you said, both above and to Ungood as well, was actually insightful and explained a lot.
So basically you like endgame pvp (preferably moba-esque), endgame raid, always disliked everything else leading up to those two, and either got some bypass, or had to grind through and you hated that.
Also your dream game would be a moba-like pvp (small-scaled group play, pre-balanced, relatively short rounds),
raids (relatively small-scaled group play, no gear dependency, easy access),
and a creator mode for the two above.
Nothing above there needs anything from MMORPGs, no surprise you want to skip all the games contain...
What you really seek is simply an online game, unfortunately there's nothing on the market offering those three features at the same time - at least yet.
Looking at the directions, the rise of the quasi-MMOs, maybe someone will combine a moba with a raid mode (with those pre-made characters) and a creator.
Until then, you're stucked with MMORPGs... and the horrid 3 weeks long "grind" to reach your fun at the end of the game.
I would say that survival games fit the bill quite nicely, especially a quality one like Conan. Not completely, but much more then any MMORPG out there. And despite many here scoffing at the survival genre I think its an excellent addition to gaming as a whole and a somewhat continuation of the dying MMORPG genre.
/Cheers, Lahnmir
'the only way he could nail it any better is if he used a cross.'
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
Comments
But at the same time, unlike so many other MMO's my world did not shrink, I did not get bottlenecked into the "End Game" as it where, All the Content remained open to me to play in, I could stomp around Iron Marches (level 40) looking for Platinum even at 80th, and have fun. I could go run off and do a Jormag (Level80), and then do a Fire Elemental (Level 10), and I didn't have to leave the content behind.
Another cool aspect of GW2, was Leveling Tomes, which you start to collect massive amounts of once you get to 80th, so that if at some point you want to level an Alt or 6., it's a simple matter of using the Tomes you have collected to do it.
It's only no-lifers that have the time to fully play games. Why should you be left out?
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Well first off, I think we have made progress that it is not an MMO you want to play, so that's good.
With that said, moving on to your continual desire for player made content, UGC (User Generated Content?), well that is not a new idea, and sadly the major games that tried to incorporate player made dungeon content has made it clear that is was a failure and that it takes more work to check and moderate player made dungeons then it does to just hire devs to make the content professionally. This was said in no uncertain terms by Cryptic directly, who had made 2 games with the focus on player made dungeons.
So I don't think that dream will ever manifest again anytime soon, and I legitimately feel bad for you, that you missed the boat when Neverwinter had an active foundry, it might have been very cathartic for you to have experienced it.
This is not the same as Voxel based games, like Minecraft, which can be found in other active MMO's like Trove, Boundless, and Creativerse, etc. but the players ability to modify the open world is such that they can't do too much damage or skew the way the game is played. But I know in Trove, a player can submit Dungeon designs to the Company, as well as other player designed things, like weapons, face masks, hats, etc. but I don't think that is what you are looking for.
With all that said, there are in fact quite a few MOBA/BR's makers have put in PvE content. IIRC, Fortnight advertised a Co-Op PvE survival mode, where you and your friends could face off against hordes of Zombies.
Eternal Crusade has Hive Missions.
And a relative new game, called Unfortunate Spacemen (a 3d Among Us rip off) has both PvE Story and Invasion Missions.
So that Dream of a PvP game with PvE dungeons/missions is already manifest.
So, at the end of the day, what you really want is an Basic PvP Game, with all the horizontal aspects that go with it, that has some PvE missions as well, and that already exist, so you might want to look into them to find that perfect itch to scratch, as opposed to trying to make a huge fuss about twisting some other game into something that it was never meant to be nor will it ever work for you.
So as others and myself have said already, You're pursuing the wrong platform for your dreams.
Some people can only think about getting to their destination, and hate everything in-between and want it over and done with as fast as possible.
Other people enjoy the journey. They enjoy the Trip itself, the sights they pass, the music on the radio, who they are with, all of it makes for a grand experience getting to the destination.
It's just that simple.
Not a hard thing to grasp.
When you reach level 20 on FFXIV, you're barely starting. Sure, maybe you'll be able to tell what role is supposed to do what, but as for the classes themselves, you won't be able to tell what makes each job different from the other. The job advancement itself only happens on level 30, and although it does introduce you to each class core mechanic, it's still arguably the experience you'll have on Stormblood and Shadowbringers (61~80). Most classes don't get a real rotation with unique CDs and weaving until around 50.
I think people care too much about how long it takes to level up instead of how fun and diversified the process is. For instance, it doesn't take that long to level up on Ragnarok Online, but the problem is the process isn't fun neither diversified. It's up to you to decide how you want to level up. The game only needs to give you several ways to do that and keep you from getting stuck in a boring process.
There's more I could say, but I've read other comments, and most of them cover the topic in a way I mostly agree to.
When I lost 68 pounds. I enjoyed talking with my wife about the calories in everything I ate, charting my calorie count by the day and by the week, to see where I was, when I went under, when I went over. It was a game of seeing if I could have that extra treat, or cheat day.
I also enjoyed going to the gym, I looked forward to seeing how far I could run, seeing by the days and weeks my mileage and speed on the treadmill increase.
I enjoy the lifting of the weights and it was almost a dance to me to put them back on the rack, looking at the other people in the gym, those that sifted through, those that came back, how they dressed, how they worked out.
I recall my 3rd week at the gym was when I finally got notice by the gym rats that I was "Sticking to it" and that little step of progress helped me along, helped me come back the next day, because I was.. enjoying that journey.
Sure, the 68 pounds was a good loss, and I felt great after, then I was in a terrible accident, shattered several bones all through my body, and gained roughly 110 pounds.. LOL.
But.. it was that journey, that looking forward to going to the guy each day, even placing the chunks of chicken on the scale to make sure that I was keeping things in budget, all of it, the routine, and the efforts to bust up the routine, where where the joy was for me.
Sorry you didn't enjoy the process, but I suppose that is what makes us different, I don't think I could have ever enjoy life with your outlook that the process sucks and only the end matters.
The process, the steps, the events, the life changes and little and big things, that's the joy, that's the journey, that's where Life exists... At least to people like me..
I am sure you have a totally different outlook, and truth be told, it does not appeal to me to learn about it. Nothing personal and no diss, just.. it's not my care.
You do You. More power to you.
If you want to allow people to skip the first 12 books in a series to jump straight to the 13th, that's fine. But don't take the first 12 books out of print so that no one can get access to them anymore, just as a way to rush people to the 13th.
The argument that repeating something a bunch of times gets boring applies to the endgame, too. Endgames tend to be extremely repetitive, which is why so many people hate them.
If you are dealing with a 13 book series, and you have someone that read all 13 books, vs someone who read the last page of the last book, in this situation, they both might be at "The End"
But the person that only read one page, should only reap the rewards of that One page, not all 13 books.
And I think that is the answer when someone asks "What does this take from you"
Well if I read the books, I would have a much deeper, richer, and better understanding of what the books where about, the characters, the world, everything would be far more in-depth to me, and this is the reward for reading all the books, that depth of whole story, that someone who read one page, simply could not get.
So that is what gets taken, that sense of fairness, that sense of reward for the time put in.
You're basically saying that you didn't like a broken version of the zone. The solution is to fix the zone, not to delete it.
A lot of games have deserted mid-level zones because they have a broken server architecture that insists that they must have exactly the same number of copies of every zone, even if ten times as many players play in one zone as another. If there are 100 people globally playing some particular level 70 zone and the game splits them across 20 servers so that no 10 of them are in the same instance of the zone, and 5 players per zone is too few, then that's a problem of a broken server architecture. Fix the server architecture. Don't delete the content.
Some games can't do that because they don't have enough of a playerbase to even keep one server filled. But if there is more than one instance of a zone and they're all deserted, that's because the company botched their server architecture.
Without scaling content to players, they can have a backstop of, if something is too hard, you're not stuck. Just grind out another level or two elsewhere, then come back and it will be easier. But if grinding out another level or two elsewhere means that the content has now scaled up further and you still can't do it, that's no good. So they have to make it easier at all levels if you can't make it easier yourself by leveling past it.
There is a lot involved in the build itself and how it's set up, it's not simply a matter of go get +1 level and that makes you stronger and now you can do it.
This had become abundantly clear to Anet in their expansion content that is 80th level (Level cap), and HoT open world content was decimating their Casual player base.. but since you were max level... there was no where to go, you could not just go get +1 level.. so Now what?
Well, if the content is kicking your ass, and you are already maxed level, It's time to look at your gear set up, what your stats are, what weapons are you using, what combos are you laying down, what your trait lines are.. in short, it's time for an overhaul.
In this venture with GW2, there is a 10X DPS disparity between a weak build and a meta build running the proper rotations, this means, if you are playing a weak (Not directly grimped, but just poorly laid out, or unoptimized) build, and not using a good or ideal rotation of skills, your DPS can be as low as 1/10 what someone else could put out with a more optimized build doing proper rotations.
So in this case, it's not just a matter of being able to gain another level, you need to think about what your build is, and how you plan to make it work.
When HoT launched, it was made to be a good hunting grounds for the more meta style builds, the meta CORE builds, but, this was very hard for their casual who did not get into making and playing Meta builds, and often just built what they thought would be fun to play.
As far as the power creep from expansions goes is nominal really.
The Level Cap has not Increased. So there no Direct Power Gap in that form.
The gear combs do not offer better stats, just different combos, (Some of which really suck), and Core Berserker Combo is still King for Power DPS.
The Elite Spec's don't offer any direct power ups, and often just offer more utility and variable ways to play.
So this illusion that there is some OMG the Expansions gave a massive Power Creep, is not true at all.
It's purely a matter of playing a well set up build vs playing a poorly set up build, you have many choices in GW2 on how you want to play, and unfortunately with being given the ability to make choices, you can make bad ones.
The upside of GW2, is that CORE is often easy enough that the bad choices are not as noticeable.
To use an example, I took a break from GW2 for a few years after HoT. I just came back like a month ago, to screw around and get a skyscale.
So, I join some guild and run a T4 fractal with them, and they are like "Umm dude, you're DPS is like bad, like real bad" and I am playing the old school rock solid Shout Guard from Metabattle from way back in 2012, so I am like "Ok, what do you mean?"
Well they link a new Guard Build for me from Metabattle.. a CORE Guard Build, so noting from the expansions, just your base Core Guard. All what I had to work from and with.
I click the "Activate this Build" button. I did not change my gear, or even my attack rotations.. my DPS went from 2.5K to 16K.. in the click of a button, just like that.
No Expansion needed power Creep, no needing the new stuff. just a simple update in how to maximize traits for DPS vs the Survival build I had originally.
Now sure, I could swap out my Knights for Zerker, and trooper runes for Scholar, maybe upgrade the simple AR infusions for Stat+AR infusions, and get another bump up in DPS. (Again, both of these are from Core) but.. meh.. fuck that.
So.. With that said, GW2 is super new player friendly, and you can get the expansions dirt cheap as well.
If you want to be optimal in GW2, you don't need anything special at all, it's as easy as looking up a build on Metabattle and following the recipe.
Case in point, I made a warrior to do strike missions with my guild because for some awful reason they love them. So, new character slot, tome the little shit up to 80th, Look up Warrior in Meta Battle, Banner Slave is the shizzle, so I slap some cheap ass exotics on and the suggested low rent runes, and My Warrior does around 33K DPS (with a burst that hit 60K According to my friend), as a brand new generic Banner Slave, wearing the basic cheap and easy to get equipment.
They work, I mean they do exactly what a banner slave warrior is supposed to do in that content, and their DPS is on par for the build they are running. I could get a little more DPS if upgraded to Ascended Weapons/Armor, and used +power infusions, but for what would amount to only a 4% overall gain, it was not worth the grind when I would rather do other things in game.
So.. the idea that GW2 has Power Creep, is not correct.
It's really a matter of "I wanna play my way" vs "Follow this Meta Recipe"
I like DDO's system much better, but GW2 is really forgiving to making some crap builds.
Games can and should give both sides what they want. The problem right now is that a lot of games give neither side what they want. They make the lower level content awful (not what people who like lower level content want), then say that you have to do it anyway to reach the raiding (not what the raiders want).
As others have said here, some of us play games because we actually enjoy playing them. Not all of us want to speed through the leveling process at the blink of an eye just to get to end game. Some of us don't care about end game. Some of us actually enjoy the leveling process and revisiting the old zones and quests. You take those out and you will ruin the game for a lot of people.
Look at Cataclysm in World of Warcraft. That was one of Blizzard's huge mistakes, destroying the old world. There was so much backlash that now whenever a zone is changed due to story, you can go talk to an NPC in that zone to be taken back in time to see the zone and experience it as it once was. They now have sharding and phasing to help do this. I think they saw when they lost a lot of subscribers that removing content people loved sure wasn't the way to go. While I am not a fan of sharding, phasing and CRZ by any means in WoW, I do like what Blizzard did with giving us the option to experience the world changed from new content, and the ability to go back and experience it how it was before it changed due to story.
In my opinion, streamlining is what has ruined and is what continues to ruin mmorpg's. I have saw it happen to many of the games I once loved. And now you are asking for even more streamlining to games that have been streamlined so much they are a shell of what they once were.
So you asked in your article for thoughts and if we agree. As for me, I respectfully disagree with the whole article. If mmo's were to all do what you suggested in this article, it would ruin them for me and many others.
I'd argue ESO did it better. Because mobs always scale to your level (but not your "power level"; aka Gear Level). Every single zone/dungeon is viable for leveling, farming, or just killing time.
And with the cap on the mobs' "power", you still get the feeling you're getting stronger as you get higher power gear. Aaaand, since gear and leveling hasn't changed. You can do what I did, drop the game for 5 years and come back and there's zero "level [and/or] power hump" to get over to get back into the game.
((Imagine taking a break during, say, Cata, and coming back during BFA...yikes!))
Wish more MMOs would take this approach or not forcing players to feel like they have to keep playing or risk 'falling behind'.
Like, sure, it's great as a business model; you keep a steady stream of income. But all it leads to is burn out and people eventually leaving the game.
Then few return because "omg, all this content I'd have to clear".
Our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising everytime we fall.
/Cheers,
Lahnmir
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer