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[Dev Journal] General: Have MMOs Become Too Easy?

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  • Electro057Electro057 Member UncommonPosts: 683
    No, they are simply less of a grindy time sink these days. I mean, they are easier in that you can quest and solo to max level. But the mechanics have evolved in some instances with complex class mechanics and the like....A lot of the time sink in grinding and camping for 10 hours is gone though. And I wouldn't want it any other way.

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  • bcbullybcbully Member EpicPosts: 11,843

    Do you know why though? the "I don't have the time crowd." The same crowd that does not like Wpvp, long dungeons, tough raids, complex crafting, and progression. 

     

    They loooove jumping puzzles though.

  • Electro057Electro057 Member UncommonPosts: 683
    Originally posted by bcbully

    Do you know why though? the "I don't have the time crowd." The same crowd that does not like Wpvp, long dungeons, tough raids, complex crafting, and progressions. 

     

    They loooove jumping puzzles though.

    Man jumping puzzles are awesome! I love Guild Wars 2! So much to explore!

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  • HeafstaggHeafstagg Member UncommonPosts: 172
    Yeah I agree with the article big time, but the plug for firefall is kind of tacky. It would have been better to leave that out and then I'm positive someone on the forums would know who it was or Bill could have dropped it in the forum comment section casually and it would have had a much greater effect. Kinda turned me off the whole article and the game.

    image
  • OpapanaxOpapanax Member Posts: 973
    Originally posted by Icewhite

    OP: I'm certain you mean well. But the question you're asking as akin to asking any man if his wee-wee is bigger than average. 

    Well now that you mentioned it....(premade-male response on forum of annonymity)..

    The more you know!

    PM before you report at least or you could just block.

  • tank017tank017 Member Posts: 2,192

    MMO's have indeed become way too easy.WoW opened the flood gates to easiness,casualness,and accessibility. I respect Kern for being able to look back and realize this.

     

    Im no fan of easy mode and the easy mode state that MMO's are in today.I come from a time where my MMO infancy was unforgiving,challenging,and dangerous.A time where gaining levels werent as easy as logging on.That is the era in which I crave..

     

    not MMO's where a 5 year old can jump on and play and know what he/she is doing.

  • WW4BWWW4BW Member UncommonPosts: 501
    Originally posted by xAPOCx
    Originally posted by Kuro1n
    Originally posted by xAPOCx
    Originally posted by Xarko
    Not necessarily easy, but they became SIMPLE.

    I dont see the difference

    Noncomplex vs hard. Complex might be more related to knowledge while hard means it takes skill to play properly etc... (well thats how I read it anyway).

    lol still dont see the difference. Easy and Simple are one in the same when talking about game play relating to MMOs. For me it is anyway. Not going to get all philosophical on these 2 words. No reason for it. Easy and Simple are the 2 words i would use if i were asked to rate the level of difficulty in understanding this topic.

     

    "Have MMOs Become too Easy?"

     

    A Easy, Simple answer to that is YES!

     Simple and hard are not necessarily the same thing. 

    Lets say you really only need to hit one button, maybe two.. but you have to do it quite a few times and at have the timing right... Its fairly simple just hit the button when prompted.. But its hard to do for a long period of time. And by that measuring stick.. Games have actually become harder. I just get bored so fast I cant focus on the simple gameplay.. Luckily most mobs are so easy they cant kill you and will eventually die to a damage shield.. and if not.. well maybe you kill them when you wake up from your nap.. if you dont uninstall and go look for better games.

  • DilligDillig Member UncommonPosts: 123

    I think too easy is the wrong way to put it.

     

    MMO's have become a game on rails. They take you by the hand and lead you from quest to quest zone to zone. They are mindless games these days.

     

     That makes them extremely boring. I would rather see exploration and killing mobs give more xp and have questing be a secondary thing. Except for epic quests.

     Epic quest meaning it might take a raid group to help you complete 1 part of your epic quest and you wont get it all done till your max level. EQ epic quests are exactly what I am talking about. You felt like you actually accomplished something when you was done.

  • AtavaxAtavax Member Posts: 11
    the videogame playerbase for any type of game is probably bigger now than it was 10 years ago. But instead of focusing on a single playerbase, like many games did back then, every developer seems to want to make their game appeal to as wide an audience as possible  and tries to make features fit that simply don't fit. This is especially true in MMOs where developers always want to cram a million things into their mmo. How about instead of every MMO having amazing story/questing, amazing pvp, amazing 5 mans, and amazing raids; we have individual games that only have 1 or 2 of each of those features?  You look at something like Warframe, and in a lot of ways it resembles MMO 5 man dungeons, but they made it faster paced, they made it shooter combat. They haven't tried to fit raids into it, they haven't tried to fit a pvp system into it, they haven't put questing into it. They kept it focused. In a lot of ways i think they're still struggling to define the game, but i think a lot of the appeal of the game is that it isn't trying to appeal to everyone. 
  • junitaliajunitalia Member UncommonPosts: 20

    Veteran Paladin from Vanilla WoW sits on his steed. The steed he had to save money for and find componants for and actually fight for.

    A new player comes a long and the mount is given to them freely...The veteran paladin dies a little more inside...

    <a href="http://www.enjin.com/" alt="swtor guild hosting"><img src="http://sigs.enjin.com/sig-swtor/120457bac4d0f5a2.png"></a>

  • jason95821jason95821 Member Posts: 2

    i miss the 40 man raids from wow 

    mmo's these days are just boring once you hit max level 

    they leave little to no reason to join a guild  *provided you can even find a decent guild and not just some 1 mass inviting every thing that moves *

    leveling has been dumbed down way to much 

    most mmos i have played recently  have felt more of a single player game than a mmo 

     

  • TuchakaTuchaka Member UncommonPosts: 468
    I am very comfortable calling it a fact that MMO's have become much easier.....just one problem easier games mean more casuals, more casuals equal more money, which is why as time goes on i will be playing less and less AAA MMO's . GW2 had a lot of features i found interesting but leveling is so easy it makes it feel meaningless to me.
  • rodingorodingo Member RarePosts: 2,870
    They always were easy

    "If I offended you, you needed it" -Corey Taylor

  • LithuanianLithuanian Member UncommonPosts: 558

    Nice try to (spam) advertise your own game. Almost everywhere content is too easy, "but we at Firefly...". Thanks for ad, I do hope you paid mmorpg.com fopr this.

    Question "game has become too easy?" is pointless. it's like - "what cookie is the best?". There are no easy or hard games at all and you know it. It's gamer that considers game to be hard or easy. Second point is: some people do not want over-complicated content. What if I want just to ride, fight that 10 rats (just in the name of fighting 10 rats because I kill them all with one AoE attack) or just wander in landscape I enjoy? And if there are many users who want that - companies naturally do non-problematic content. It's pretty easy: if people demand triple fishburgers instead of Big Macs, offer them triple fishburgers.

    And - OP has to wonder - different players have different opinions. One player would demand a very slow progression. "Not more than 10 xp per day!" - he will demand - "any quest should be 100 players only!". it's ok, since it fits the player. Another will demand quikc progression. "No less than 10 levels per day!" - he will demand - "only soloable quests!". It's ok, since it fits the player.

    So - what's wrong with people having different opinions and paying for them?

  • ArthasmArthasm Member UncommonPosts: 785

    In our own game, Firefall, we try to focus on the journey, not the end. We work hard to create a beautiful world, and you never out-level a zone since the dynamic events scale to players. Our quests and missions are dynamic, letting us put more work into making the event fun to do and letting you do it as often as you like and because you are challenged by them. 

    Same I heard from Arena Net. So, I had fun leveling toon and left game after 3 months, cause there is no end game. I guess your Firefall is same, fun for 2-3 months and bye. About Wow, there where your game is "challenging and fun" Wow is easy, but why you don't put something about Wow endgame in text? Dungeons are easy too, but what about Heroic Raids? 

    Thanks for advertising your game and describing, now I know on which game to not waste hdd space.

     

     

  • HrimnirHrimnir Member RarePosts: 2,415
     
     

    I literally came all over myself when i read, from the mouth of the lead designer of the game i blame for ruining the MMO genre, that even HE realizes that they fucking killed it.

    Validation, OH YES.  Damn it feels good.

    I still laugh at the people who cite vanilla wow as some sort of bar for difficulty, etc.  I chose NOT to play WOW BECAUSE i read that you could reach max level in roughly 200-250 hours of play.  As an EverQuest Veteran that was a joke.  Hell, i spent 40 hours just getting through level 51, yes, 1 level.  And you know what, hearing that ding was more satisfying than ANYTHING i did in WOW. Yes, i ultimately played it because SOE botched the release of EQ2 so bad.  So, i came to WOW about 8 months prior to release of BC, and here is the sad part:  In 3 months i went from brand new fresh character, to the only thing i needed from MC for my warlock was the choker of the firelord.  That was working full time, putting at best 25 hours a week into the game and realistically more like 18-20/week.

     

    "The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."

    - Friedrich Nietzsche

  • WraithoneWraithone Member RarePosts: 3,806

    Grummz, as much as "casual" has become a swear word to some, are you forgetting how Blizzard made *Billions* by expanding their appeal to the "casual" market?  That expanded market is also available to other companies now.

    I keep hearing people talk about "challenging" this, that and the other.  Upping the difficulty of a given game, doesn't mean that the *fun* of the game has increased.  Far too many people forget the difference between challenging, and frustrating.  Challenging game play *can* be entertaining.  But when one crosses over the line to frustrating, its a demonstration of poor design, and poor targeting.

    Its also true that those who worship at the shrine of the Holy Skill, all too often forget that not everyone is blessed with the mad skillz that some take for granted.   That lapse of insight, can be very expensive in terms of the profits to be made.  Which given what major games cost to produce, is a serious consideration.

    "If you can't kill it, don't make it mad."
  • EvelknievelEvelknievel Member UncommonPosts: 2,964

    MMORPG are definitely more simplified simply because the software gaming companies want to reach out to a bigger audience and not to a niche crowd of players anymore.

    That's why we got so much of the same ole same ole mmorpgs & fps games with a different skin.

    Go back about a decade in mmorpg's and thats where the real gold was in gaming, not this stuff there shoveling us today.

    Anarchy Online, Eve Online, Star Wars Galaxies, Ultima Online, Uncharted Waters Online, Shadowbane, Asheron's Call, Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot and need I go on make these mmo games we got today way too simple. The only 2 that comes to my mind in being of a big learner curve today would be, Age of Wushu and Perpetuum.

  • WraithoneWraithone Member RarePosts: 3,806
    Originally posted by xAPOCx
    Originally posted by Xarko
    Not necessarily easy, but they became SIMPLE.

    I dont see the difference

    Chess is a *simple* game.  Does that make it an *easy* game?

    "If you can't kill it, don't make it mad."
  • observerobserver Member RarePosts: 3,685
    It all comes down to convenience, frustration, satisfaction, and challenge.  Trying to balance all these in an MMO is very difficult.
  • geelgeel Member UncommonPosts: 93

    Yes!! Exactly the word I was trying to spread on the forums a while ago.

    Agreed in every way.

  • ezduzitezduzit Member Posts: 112
    Only veteran sanbox players can give an answer worth paying attention to. The rest are WoW players that never had an outside experience. Most think they do but the OP should consider that when typing his thoughts.  
  • DavisFlightDavisFlight Member CommonPosts: 2,556
    Originally posted by david361107

    I've been talking about his ever sense WOW went easy mode.

    WoW has been easy mode since day 1. When it launched it was the simplest, most casual MMO on the market.

     

    And yes, without a doubt, it set the trend that killed a genre, as said in the article.

  • DavisFlightDavisFlight Member CommonPosts: 2,556
    Originally posted by ezduzit
    Only veteran sanbox players can give an answer worth paying attention to. The rest are WoW players that never had an outside experience. Most think they do but the OP should consider that when typing his thoughts.  

    That's the problem I constantly run into when talking to people about MMOs. Most simply do not have the experience to debate things.

     

    Like the folks that say "MMOs could never work without instances!" and yet, they've never played an MMO without one. Most of these folks reference dark tales of MMOs past with "camping" and "griefing" but they can't name the game or why these things existed.

    There are far fewer players who actually saw the full evolution of the genre the way the veterans did, and can give an accurate and deep debate on the subject.

     

    As one who was here from the start, MMOs have without a doubt gotten worse over time.

  • FlyByKnightFlyByKnight Member EpicPosts: 3,967

    "Our quests and missions are dynamic, letting us put more work into making the event fun to do and letting you do it as often as you like and because you are challenged by them."

     

     

    This is not what is happening in Firefall.  AT ALL. Your ARES Missions are on a ridiculously repetitive loop and there isn't a single mechanic to them or the enemy npcs.  They're so easy a caveman can do them and your teams only response has been to increase HP, damage, and  the tracking of bots. Your communities response has been to have bigger zergs and bumrush through your content. It's just like Guild Wars 2 dynamic events but much more poorly executed.

     

     

    Firefall really needs to go back to the drawing board in that respect. Go play some Nightmare instances in The Secret World or play Dark Souls or something.

     

     
     
    "As far as the forum code of conduct, I would think it's a bit outdated and in need of a refre *CLOSED*" 

    ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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