I want a game that doesn't slowly try to accomodate lesser skilled played get on my level or gtfo.... I think back to Vanlla WoW and remember how people would see me in T1 and I felt like a celebrity in the awesome armor, or even when I saw people in High Warlord/ Grand Marshall in the BGs and knew instantly they weren't to be taken lightly now it seems everyone is able to get the same gear with little to know effort, there is no incentive to be hardcore anymore its just a race now to finish your cookie cutter before the next guy, and then wait until the game company comes out with frosting and sprinkles to entice you to move to the next level. I want challenge I thrive on it, as frustrating as it is I want to play a game where I can eventually be better than everyone else. This Kantianism view that everyone should have equal chances to get the same stuff is ridiculous everyone already has the same chances as anyone else its asinine to reduce the difficulty of the game for the less experienced, coordinated, and intelligent players. MMOs in essence are a team sport if one isn't pulling their weight you either train the or replace them. The game loses its aspects of community by making the content easily accessible for all. My plea is to bring back the exclusivity to the MMO genre I want to be challenged, frustrated, and insulted by the game before I am to get my delicious delicious cake its at this point that the game becomes fun for me. I want class quests and exclusive titles, trials, tribulations, and attunements that are not easily acquired. I want event that force a whole servers to work in tandum to open a gate to a raid, or event. I want to see raids that have raids and dungeons to be completed before they can be attempted even after they reset....MMORPGs you have been sorely disappointing me lately
There are times when one must ask themselves is it my passion that truly frightens you? Or your own?
Originally posted by deamian Time is valuable, lately everything is centered around that concept. I want another game like Everquest that steals away my entire evening to get progress, not a game that I progress through the whole game in one evening.
With hard work comes satisfaction.
I love getting loot like the next person, but mmos these days have gotten way to easy in handing it out. Hell i remember in "Said Game{s}" Epics felt,well more EPIC because you worked for them and in doing so, it felt good.
Its like the difference between going to a Buffet and a Restaurant
Buffet = Quantity over Quality : Restaurant = Quality over Quantity.
The late 20's dishevelled cubicle monkey who spent the last decade+ spending 6-8 hours a night with them is probably going to outgrow them anyway. You can see the sucking vortex of anhedonia and malaise within this demographic. Worse yet is that many of them have this tiny flicker of hope that just gets blown out time and again. It's like watching the day to day life of an honest-to-god junkie.
Originally posted by deamian Time is valuable, lately everything is centered around that concept. I want another game like Everquest that steals away my entire evening to get progress, not a game that I progress through the whole game in one evening.
With hard work comes satisfaction.
I love getting loot like the next person, but mmos these days have gotten way to easy in handing it out. Hell i remember in "Said Game{s}" Epics felt,well more EPIC because you worked for them and in doing so, it felt good.
Its like the difference between going to a Buffet and a Restaurant
Buffet = Quantity over Quality : Restaurant = Quality over Quantity.
Quite the apt description, since I usually feel bloated after playing a "BEFAT" style of MMO after a month. Should we coin the phrase "MMO item bloat" as well?
He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.
- Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Everything you said up to the point you plugged your current game I have felt that way for a long long time. WoW is dead to me now because of all the easymode that put into it. I no longer enjoy any of the story in it nor is the story worth paying attention to. WoW is not the only MMO which is like that either. Rift is nothing but easymode WoW cloned. When it was first released Rift was great! It was a copy of WoW and WAR (mostly), but it was challenging, NOT ANYMORE. At least Trion didn't mess with the souls, about the only enjoyment in the game is making my class the way I want to.
GW2 I found challenging ever since beta. At least for the most part you run a better risk of dying from regular encounters compared to the carebear MMOs. GW2 is one of the many games out there I actually wanted to and enjoyed exploring the world. In many zones the more you explored the more you found little easter eggs or escort quests or events that triggered when you came across them. Also you found jumping puzzles.
All in all every MMO lately has not manned up and taken a chance on revamping the boring gaming model that was hell spawned from Blizzard. My big wish for the years to come is that there will be at least 1 MMO that breaks away and does a different model well enough to draw in us old time RPGers.
MMO's definitely seem to be getting simpler but I think the bigger problem is that MMO's have become very predictable.
The newness of the genre has worn off for most players so each new game that comes out is instantly ripped apart for copying a previous game or not offering features seen in other games. It's simply a no-win situation for developers.
Couple that with the fact that many people are now refusing to pay for games due to some strange entitlement that's come about over the past year or two, and you can see why developers / publishers are hesitant or unwilling to push the envelope in terms of innovation and complexity.
Not just MMOs but RPGs in general have gone from games that catered to RPG players to instead seeking the lowest common denominator in game play and have been dumbed down, yes I said it.
No longer is each level and adventure and gives you a feeling of accomplishment, now you level if you do nothing in many games. No longer does a magical weapon give you a sense of awe. Now you throw away magic weapons like old AOL CDs in the mail.
It's not just the games however but the players as well. if you need more than 30 seconds to level then the game is to hard. If you risk dying at first level by being stupid,m the game is to hard., If you do not get handed rewards for everything you do in game play, no matter how mundane, the game somehow sucks. Challenge has been replaced with basically handing out rewards like candy. We no longer have games that challenge and try to make you be a better player, instead the whole gaming world is a 3rd grade soccer match where you get a trophy if you took a poop at the outhouse on the field during the game.
To me, it's not a question of difficulty, it's a question of texture. If a game is too successful in tuning the difficulty of every encounter to my skill, the experience becomes white noise.
The reason why old school games were hard , at least AC, was because when you died, you were dead. Does anyone remember the Virindi quest ?
2 groups, 2 dungeons. One low, one high, had to open doors for each other until they reached the boss. It could take up to 2 hours and being part of the low level group meant pretty much you are a one hit kill. So 2 hours of play through a not easy dungeon(npcs ignored your armor) and then one spell and you are out. No loot, nothing. but not only that, you also lost half your inventory.
That was the last game without the ressurect mechanic iirc. Everything after made diing a part of the game. Die-> chat: RESS!!!! -> "cast ressurect" -> fight again = Easy mode
The reason why old school games were hard , at least AC, was because when you died, you were dead. Does anyone remember the Virindi quest ?
2 groups, 2 dungeons. One low, one high, had to open doors for each other until they reached the boss. It could take up to 2 hours and being part of the low level group meant pretty much you are a one hit kill. So 2 hours of play through a not easy dungeon(npcs ignored your armor) and then one spell and you are out. No loot, nothing. but not only that, you also lost half your inventory.
That was the last game without the ressurect mechanic iirc. Everything after made diing a part of the game. Die-> chat: RESS!!!! -> "cast ressurect" -> fight again = Easy mode
I'm not sure if possessing a resurrection skill is really the issue. While I agree that death should have its penalties, and they should be severe. You could do something where you could only rez once per hour. Where you really needed to make the rez count. That and be damned sure that you won't be hit by any MOB while you are casting it.
I never played AC, but that dungeon run you describe sounds really fun. It also has all the key elements that I enjoy in MMOs. Communcation, Collaboration, Tactics, and Skill. But everyone makes mistakes, and throw in server latency, and I could see a lot of reasons for at least having a 1 or 2 shot rez during the dungeon run you described.
He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.
- Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Yes, and cookie cutter, just like movies. There are exceptions, GW2, but that game is entirely too easy. I hope this changes with EQNext, but not holding my breath.
Interesting and wellwritten, you certainly made some good points there.
I do feel like this when I play the couple of MMO's I still play, I don't really feel any sense of achievement anymore.
I'll have to wait and see what the future holds I guess, with the new games coming out.
I will say however, that even though some good points were made in this article, at the end it felt more like you were simply trying to sell the game you're working on at the moment, Firefall.
A bit disappointing, but a good read nonetheless!
Peter Griffin: you know those germans, if you dont join the party, they?ll come get ya
I don't know if games are too easy. What I do know is that some developers currently don't know what "difficulty" is. They think it's just adding tons of hp, tons of damage and making the enemy NPCs as cheap as possible. That's not challenging that's annoying. It's bad lazy design
It's ironic that Firefall is one of the images referenced with pictures. Firefall is a game full of aimbots, that have more hp than necessary they can kill people pretty quickly no matter how skilled you are because they track you and are cheap. That's absolute NOT a challenge. People simply find exploits in the bad AI or positional exploits, or burn through content by zerging through it. Firefall isn't "too hard" it's cheap and poorly designed. It's easy to exploit and frustratingly BAD if you don't.
It's the same reason why Guild Wars 2 dungeons tend to be utter garbage because ANet doesn't know what difficulty and challenge is. They shoe horned in mechanics to compete with TERA.
A game like The Secret World has the best dungeons and challenges out of any of the new release MMOs. They took to the time to craft mechanics and encounters that challenges a players hand eye coordination, team work, build and decision making.
"As far as the forum code of conduct, I would think it's a bit outdated and in need of a refre *CLOSED*"
Yes, Mark. Absolutely! It's all your fault for making WoW so easy and Blizzard's fault for continuing to dumb it down.
To add insult to serious injury we now have a section of the community clammoring for MMO's to be made for consoles. As if things weren't bad enough as it is. Lets make them even dumber to fit on a console, what a great idea! NOT!
Things are going to get a whole lot worse before they get better.
Yes, Mark. Absolutely! It's all your fault for making WoW so easy and Blizzard's fault for continuing to dumb it down.
To add insult to serious injury we now have a section of the community clammoring for MMO's to be made for consoles. As if things weren't bad enough as it is. Lets make them even dumber to fit on a console, what a great idea! NOT!
Things are going to get a whole lot worse before they get better.
I have to interject here on your comment about console MMO's. Just because a game is on a console doesn't mean it's going to be less challenging than something on PC.
GW2 is a good example of an MMO, that's not too far removed that it wouldn't work on a console. DCUO proves that console MMO's can work, as well as titles like EQoA and Final Fantasy.
The degree's of difficulty in games are not determined by the platform they are made for, but the design elements that are chosen upon their creation. It is this aspect of MMO's being easy that the writter is pointing out.
Not whether an MMO is "harder" on PC's or Consoles.
PM before you report at least or you could just block.
YES! Thanks for a great article. My first mmo was FFXI and it was brutal. I'm a relatively casual - and older - gamer and, after experimenting with a few classes to find the one I really wanted to level, it took me about a year to get to level cap. But the moment I hit 75, it was a huge accomplishment - but the journey had really just begun.
With games these days, it takes me - ME, with a wife, busy job, house to clean and fix, etc. - about 3-4 weeks to hit level cap if I don't mess around with side things. Unfortunately even those "side things" are becoming much fewer and far between. There is no joy in a zone - there is only the goal of completing a zone.
So I play most games for about a month and move back to World of Tanks until the new "next big thing" comes out.
And you might have achieved your goal - maybe I'll check out Firefall...
My thoughts almost exactly. I don't play world of tanks and I won't be playing Firefall... but other than that I feel the same about games in general and find myself longing for a game to soak up my time rather than completing a class in short order and feeling like there is little accomplished and little point of continuing.
Woah, did no one read the part when one of the former LEAD DEVS of WOW admitted to KILLING THE GENRE!?!
That is quite a monumental statement that reinforces the beliefs of many MMO gamers.
Glad he's doing something about it with Firefall, even though that game doesn't appeal to me all that much, I do wish the ESO devs would pick up on this a bit.
Yes, they have become too easy, and developers too cheap or lazy to provide servers with different rulesets so they can offer hardcore gameplay for those os us that want more of a challenge.
Risk of death should be much higher, with a reasonable penalty to your exp when you die.
Leveling up should be a slow process in general, meaning that players really should work on getting that uber level 20 armor set.
Comments
There are times when one must ask themselves is it my passion that truly frightens you? Or your own?
In the immortal words of William Goldman...
“Life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.”
I think there should be more "pain" in MMOs.
Players need to man up.
He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.
- Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
for the fun of the game
http://images.wikia.com/dragonball/images/0/0a/SSJ_Goku_Kame+hameha_by_eggmanrules.png
KAME HAME HA!
"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"
With hard work comes satisfaction.
I love getting loot like the next person, but mmos these days have gotten way to easy in handing it out. Hell i remember in "Said Game{s}" Epics felt,well more EPIC because you worked for them and in doing so, it felt good.
Its like the difference between going to a Buffet and a Restaurant
Buffet = Quantity over Quality : Restaurant = Quality over Quantity.
Quite the apt description, since I usually feel bloated after playing a "BEFAT" style of MMO after a month. Should we coin the phrase "MMO item bloat" as well?
He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.
- Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Everything you said up to the point you plugged your current game I have felt that way for a long long time. WoW is dead to me now because of all the easymode that put into it. I no longer enjoy any of the story in it nor is the story worth paying attention to. WoW is not the only MMO which is like that either. Rift is nothing but easymode WoW cloned. When it was first released Rift was great! It was a copy of WoW and WAR (mostly), but it was challenging, NOT ANYMORE. At least Trion didn't mess with the souls, about the only enjoyment in the game is making my class the way I want to.
GW2 I found challenging ever since beta. At least for the most part you run a better risk of dying from regular encounters compared to the carebear MMOs. GW2 is one of the many games out there I actually wanted to and enjoyed exploring the world. In many zones the more you explored the more you found little easter eggs or escort quests or events that triggered when you came across them. Also you found jumping puzzles.
All in all every MMO lately has not manned up and taken a chance on revamping the boring gaming model that was hell spawned from Blizzard. My big wish for the years to come is that there will be at least 1 MMO that breaks away and does a different model well enough to draw in us old time RPGers.
MMO's definitely seem to be getting simpler but I think the bigger problem is that MMO's have become very predictable.
The newness of the genre has worn off for most players so each new game that comes out is instantly ripped apart for copying a previous game or not offering features seen in other games. It's simply a no-win situation for developers.
Couple that with the fact that many people are now refusing to pay for games due to some strange entitlement that's come about over the past year or two, and you can see why developers / publishers are hesitant or unwilling to push the envelope in terms of innovation and complexity.
Not just MMOs but RPGs in general have gone from games that catered to RPG players to instead seeking the lowest common denominator in game play and have been dumbed down, yes I said it.
No longer is each level and adventure and gives you a feeling of accomplishment, now you level if you do nothing in many games. No longer does a magical weapon give you a sense of awe. Now you throw away magic weapons like old AOL CDs in the mail.
It's not just the games however but the players as well. if you need more than 30 seconds to level then the game is to hard. If you risk dying at first level by being stupid,m the game is to hard., If you do not get handed rewards for everything you do in game play, no matter how mundane, the game somehow sucks. Challenge has been replaced with basically handing out rewards like candy. We no longer have games that challenge and try to make you be a better player, instead the whole gaming world is a 3rd grade soccer match where you get a trophy if you took a poop at the outhouse on the field during the game.
=============================
I have a soap box and I am not afraid to use it.
Easy fix: remove ressurect from the/any game.
The reason why old school games were hard , at least AC, was because when you died, you were dead. Does anyone remember the Virindi quest ?
2 groups, 2 dungeons. One low, one high, had to open doors for each other until they reached the boss. It could take up to 2 hours and being part of the low level group meant pretty much you are a one hit kill. So 2 hours of play through a not easy dungeon(npcs ignored your armor) and then one spell and you are out. No loot, nothing. but not only that, you also lost half your inventory.
That was the last game without the ressurect mechanic iirc. Everything after made diing a part of the game. Die-> chat: RESS!!!! -> "cast ressurect" -> fight again = Easy mode
I'm not sure if possessing a resurrection skill is really the issue. While I agree that death should have its penalties, and they should be severe. You could do something where you could only rez once per hour. Where you really needed to make the rez count. That and be damned sure that you won't be hit by any MOB while you are casting it.
I never played AC, but that dungeon run you describe sounds really fun. It also has all the key elements that I enjoy in MMOs. Communcation, Collaboration, Tactics, and Skill. But everyone makes mistakes, and throw in server latency, and I could see a lot of reasons for at least having a 1 or 2 shot rez during the dungeon run you described.
He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.
- Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
No matter how cynical you become, its never enough to keep up - Lily Tomlin
Interesting and wellwritten, you certainly made some good points there.
I do feel like this when I play the couple of MMO's I still play, I don't really feel any sense of achievement anymore.
I'll have to wait and see what the future holds I guess, with the new games coming out.
I will say however, that even though some good points were made in this article, at the end it felt more like you were simply trying to sell the game you're working on at the moment, Firefall.
A bit disappointing, but a good read nonetheless!
Peter Griffin: you know those germans, if you dont join the party, they?ll come get ya
I don't know if games are too easy. What I do know is that some developers currently don't know what "difficulty" is. They think it's just adding tons of hp, tons of damage and making the enemy NPCs as cheap as possible. That's not challenging that's annoying. It's bad lazy design
It's ironic that Firefall is one of the images referenced with pictures. Firefall is a game full of aimbots, that have more hp than necessary they can kill people pretty quickly no matter how skilled you are because they track you and are cheap. That's absolute NOT a challenge. People simply find exploits in the bad AI or positional exploits, or burn through content by zerging through it. Firefall isn't "too hard" it's cheap and poorly designed. It's easy to exploit and frustratingly BAD if you don't.
It's the same reason why Guild Wars 2 dungeons tend to be utter garbage because ANet doesn't know what difficulty and challenge is. They shoe horned in mechanics to compete with TERA.
A game like The Secret World has the best dungeons and challenges out of any of the new release MMOs. They took to the time to craft mechanics and encounters that challenges a players hand eye coordination, team work, build and decision making.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I think they've been watered down a bit too much or simply too easy.
Note: On the homepage for article it reads
"Hame MMO's Become Too Easy" nothing major. Sure it can be edited real quick..
PM before you report at least or you could just block.
Yes, Mark. Absolutely! It's all your fault for making WoW so easy and Blizzard's fault for continuing to dumb it down.
To add insult to serious injury we now have a section of the community clammoring for MMO's to be made for consoles. As if things weren't bad enough as it is. Lets make them even dumber to fit on a console, what a great idea! NOT!
Things are going to get a whole lot worse before they get better.
I have to interject here on your comment about console MMO's. Just because a game is on a console doesn't mean it's going to be less challenging than something on PC.
GW2 is a good example of an MMO, that's not too far removed that it wouldn't work on a console. DCUO proves that console MMO's can work, as well as titles like EQoA and Final Fantasy.
The degree's of difficulty in games are not determined by the platform they are made for, but the design elements that are chosen upon their creation. It is this aspect of MMO's being easy that the writter is pointing out.
Not whether an MMO is "harder" on PC's or Consoles.
PM before you report at least or you could just block.
My thoughts almost exactly. I don't play world of tanks and I won't be playing Firefall... but other than that I feel the same about games in general and find myself longing for a game to soak up my time rather than completing a class in short order and feeling like there is little accomplished and little point of continuing.
RIP Jimmy "The Rev" Sullivan and Paul Gray.
1. Fix the image for the article on the homepage. It says "HAME MMORPGS BECOME TOO EASY"
2. Yes!
3. You are about 5 years to late, they have been dumbed down probably even longer, i don't care to check.
Part from that, boring article but i appreciate you taking the time and effort.
Woah, did no one read the part when one of the former LEAD DEVS of WOW admitted to KILLING THE GENRE!?!
That is quite a monumental statement that reinforces the beliefs of many MMO gamers.
Glad he's doing something about it with Firefall, even though that game doesn't appeal to me all that much, I do wish the ESO devs would pick up on this a bit.
Yes, they have become too easy, and developers too cheap or lazy to provide servers with different rulesets so they can offer hardcore gameplay for those os us that want more of a challenge.
Risk of death should be much higher, with a reasonable penalty to your exp when you die.
Leveling up should be a slow process in general, meaning that players really should work on getting that uber level 20 armor set.