One of the best games developed in the past few years is Minecraft. What a great game. But I really don't play it that much anymore. As soon as the game presents a challenge or requires me to do something tedious, I am to tempted to go into Creative Mode. I can't seem to get away from it. Even if I set the game so it's not there, I eventually breakdown and edit the DAT file and allow it. I give it too easy. So the game got boring because I take shortcuts when the are available.
This is similar to what has happened to MMOs. Too many things are just given now, no effort no accomplishment so no reward value. In an effort to reduce the grind, Devs have shot themselves in the foot.
Secret world was a blatant 1 shot fest in any dungeon on hard or nightmare. It took a game that was supposed to make a myriad of builds viable shoehorn people into about 3 that worked. Please do not try to champion that garbage game when many left because of their crappy end game gear grind that only rehashed dungeons you've done a million times by doing what you supposedly hate. ADD MORE HP AND DAMAGE.
That's a LIE. Players have a choice of putting on gear and skills to do any task they want, and it promotes team work and synergy.
For the record I'm not championing anything. The Secret World is far from perfect but they got the dungeon mechanics and questing right especially on Nightmare which introduced mechanics that challenged people.
"As far as the forum code of conduct, I would think it's a bit outdated and in need of a refre *CLOSED*"
Mostly, but I think the blame falls on players. Games are made easier and more casual to target a large audience, so it's profitable enough to make up for the huge amount of money it costs these days to make a game. In order to be a successful niche game with the difficulty the most vocal of the base are asking for, developers would need to lower the overall quality of the game (content, graphics, etc) in order to remain in business while purposefully targeting a smaller audience. Except, by doing this, they then alienate a significant portion of even that base, who will turn up their noses at the game because the graphics aren't comparable with current/next-gen AAAs.
Gamers are their own worst enemies.
"Forums aren't for intelligent discussion; they're for blow-hards with unwavering opinions."
Let us not forget the fact the back in the day it was pretty awsome, to play with other people in a game online, the possiblities were endless. It was the newness of the internet that made most MMOS and any mutiplayer game awasome in itself.
Now we know we cant just make a game without having invencible guards to help protect you from grifers when in town, and we know that most MMOS people do not role play or even socialize, which back in the days of UO that was the coolest thing was to be able to interact with people online.
MMOS have been reduced to untility and function, and "look what I have that you dont have" and play ground for the over ambitious whos only goal is to achieve for the sake of it, forget the story, or the expierence in itself
No,There still hard mmo. But real question is: Are there hypocritical devs?
And answer:Yes,you are.
Really,no really.
Dude you game is easy as 2+2.And we all know it's 4,but your fans don't know that,because they are EX-Call of Duty Fan.So stop making up lies and thinking.
When I'm having more fun in an indie mmo that just came out that is as old school as EQ, with no map and I almost die at the very first mobs, it tells me yeah they have become too easy. If a sense of challenge and immersion with hardly any graphic quality or AAA features is more fun to play, then yep.
By the way, if anyone is interested in the game I'm referring to it's an indie old school type mmo, The Hammers End. Jjust came out and it's fairly fun.
I haven't read most of the replies, so I apologise if I'm repeating anything.
I think it's wrong to tie difficulty and interest. I played EQ2 in '06 and it was terribly boring. It was difficult, getting around was slow, and so I spent most of my time traveling to places while trying to avoid mobs, sometimes dying and going back weakened to collect my shard, which often resulted in another death, and finally getting to the place of the quest, spending time fighting a difficult battle with a beetle or something, and going back to the quest giver. It was terribly terribly boring. It was boring because the quests were boring and because they took so much time, and spending hours to do a pretty meaningless quest isn't rewarding.
These days EQ2 still has many boring quests, but at least they are easier. They still take time, they're not always a walk in the park, but they're generally easier and it's possible to get to them more quickly, and that at least means that you're spending less time getting bored out of your mind and more time doing a variety of things. (And EQ2 added good low level content which makes at least the low levels more interesting.)
I agree that difficulty matters, which is why I liked the ability to set a difficulty level in City of Heroes (my favourite MMO), but the claim that difficult makes things interesting is simply wrong.
They became simple and easy, yes ! Only EvE online is still hardcore
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.? -Albert Einstein
"The ability to speak doesn't make you intelligent" - Qui-gon Jinn. After many years of reading Internet forums, there's no doubt that neither does the ability to write. So if you notice that I'm no longer answering your nonsense, stop trying... because you just joined my block list.
In EQ1 it was always like "Puh, how can I do THAT?!" and I loved it. When I got my Cleric Epic Weapon after a month of work, I was proud like ****.... THAT is what games should be like.
Both solo games and MMO's have become too easy, on both PC and consoles. Some might say consoles did not have as far to fall, but you can see it across gaming.
And you are going to see more of it, those social media types don't want difficulty, they want Angry Birds as a MMO. They are the new potential playerbase and there are millions more of them out there than us playing MMO's at the moment.
Todays MMO's are not made for the people who were there from their foundation, tomorrows MMO's will not be made for you.
Well said Mark; you wrote what I've been thinking, what I've been saying on the WoW forums for years. Frankly, I'm shocked that anyone that was part of creating WoW gets it at all. I gave up on that ever happening the day Mists of Pandaria was announced.
Frankly though, I'm skeptical that you really get it. The depth of an MMOG doesn't come from having 40-player raids instead of 5-player instances, it's what you do as a dev team with those things. Solo play, even, can be as deep and challenging as any raid; I suggest taking a look at the Green Fire quest for Warlocks in WoW as an example. I suggest you remember the old WoW instances and compare them to the newer raids - which gave more of a sense of accomplishment? Yeah, it's not about numbers of players, it's about the developers thinking about the entire game and creating something meaningful and challenging all the way through.
The fact is, even the most hardcore raider spends much of his time playing alone, and what WoW has done is make all that time outside of raids feel like a chore, at best. Have they got more of a percentage of the players doing instances? Absolutely, and that looks good on paper, but what those players are doing is running something they feel like they have to in order to keep up with the proverbial Jones family. Back in the original game it was kind of a pain in the butt to set up an instance run - but people did it because they WANTED to, not because they felt they had to.
Have played: Everquest, Asheron's Call, Horizons, Everquest2, World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online, Warhammer, Age of Conan, Darkfall
Too simple, too easy and too accessible. Not interesting anymore. I do still read about them occasionally on sites like those, not even sure why - but I don't play MMORPGs anymore.
Yes, got play Vanilla WoW and then WoW how it is now, I could take on 5 mobs at once where when I played a Vanilla server I wiped 3 times in the starter area. Also elite mobs were elite, you needed a group to take them, I couldn't believe that I couldn't solo Hogger which is so easy now, unless they removed him since I played.
EQ2 is even easier, that game used to be so hard, you needed a group for everything, sadly it's been dumbed down more than WoW. My DK has Three useful skills that auto heal you and do damage over time, I just hit them over and over and I can endlessly tank 10+ mobs. Such a shame how dumbed down EQ2 is....
I totally agree with what Mark has said, which is why I've abandoned so many games after beta-testing, and returned, time and time again, to old favourites like Vanguard. Why? Because although it may look clunky by modern standards, there is a depth to both the gameplay and the game world that keeps me enthralled and, most importantly, challenged. And I've been gaming since the Colossal Cave adventure, so believe me, that's a hell of a lot of play time!
I've become so tired of all the hype about the latest and greatest, which invariably means whizzy graphics and not much else, as everyone jumps on the "make it easy" bandwagon, and totally misses what the term "immersive" actually means. Smokeysong has the right of it, to keep me playing, it has to be meaningful and challenging *all the way through*.
Take Neverwinter for instance: a huge opportunity that has been totally squandered, and is only worth playing for some of the player-created scenarios. Some of these, although hidebound by the game engine, show true originality, humour and depth. The guys who wrote these scenarios are the ones that should be employed in the game industry, to bring back the days when I could get totally involved in a game, without feeling that it was just a grindfest.
Well if u want make money with mmo game, its need be casual game. there is more casual players then hardcore players.
to make game only for hardcore players is like shooting self leg.
What i dislike current mmos is that leveling is too fast.
Raids turned smaller partys, no mmo feel there.
Bingo!!
But casual doesn't mean people who don't want a challenge. casual means people who don't spend 12 hours a day in front of PC and believe in being more productive in real life.
Sadly for many players (as you can see from this topic) difficulty means lots of un necessay time sinks. The challenge should be in activity itself an not how much time it takes to do a certain task or how many times you die and spend another 20 to 30 minutes to get back in game. That is not challenge..that is tedium.
"The problem is that the hardcore folks always want the same thing: 'We want exactly what you gave us before, but it has to be completely different.' -Jesse Schell
"Online gamers are the most ludicrously entitled beings since Caligula made his horse a senator, and at least the horse never said anything stupid." -Luke McKinney
I'm playing Granado Espada (once known as Swords of the New World) lately. There are a HEAP of bugs, the quests line system is generally confusing and somewhat frustrating, and the game can be played 80% afk.
And yet I'm loving it. Even the frustration from the intractible quest system has an odd "satisfied once done" factor to it. I'm right now attempting to get to the quest line that allows me to do the quest line to open up the "Master Stance" shop, and despite spending so far two entire days switching between the game, websites, my alt toons, I'm loving what I'm experiencing.
Yes, got play Vanilla WoW and then WoW how it is now, I could take on 5 mobs at once where when I played a Vanilla server I wiped 3 times in the starter area. Also elite mobs were elite, you needed a group to take them, I couldn't believe that I couldn't solo Hogger which is so easy now, unless they removed him since I played.
EQ2 is even easier, that game used to be so hard, you needed a group for everything, sadly it's been dumbed down more than WoW. My DK has Three useful skills that auto heal you and do damage over time, I just hit them over and over and I can endlessly tank 10+ mobs. Such a shame how dumbed down EQ2 is....
When I started WoW I could have made the same comparison from the games I had left to Vanilla WoW..
Possibly my experince in other games helped me, or it was because I played a paladin. I could kill anything non-elite in a few swings and elite mobs were the only thing that were anything like I was used to from other games.
Dungeons were a bit harder.. but usually due to the fact that often people werent used to group play.
I think this is where free to play can really shine. When I was playing wow, the thing that drove me was a sense of getting my moneys worth out of the sub. To me, and probably many others was getting to the highest level and competing for end game gear. Taking out the sub and the feeling of getting my moneys worth removes that. I'm not as driven to get to end game, or feeling like I have to play every minute of everyday. I can play casual and send some cash in the item store for the some boosts if I feel the need. The thing that bothers me the most about MMO's is the lack of feeling like I am in a living world. The one that comes the closest is EQ2. Mostly they feel like a multiplayer arcade.
I agree with him for 100%, and I think this post should be read by the majority of the MMO community. There once was a time where games had great dept and where players enjoyed the experiences in the world and were not rushing to endgame content.
Now everything is just a spoon fed theme park where everything is about instant gratification. I hope the genre changes for the better in the coming years, and I do believe this will happen. It seems finally (for me it has been since years) the majority of MMO players are sick of these dumbed down, shallow games.
They remove all the nuances thus simplifying the games. I remember SWG when there was no speeders or creature mounts. Leaving and adventuring out into the world felt like it meant something. You did everything imaginable to stay alive and learned survival due to a fear of having to traverse that treacherous path again and again. No teleporting anywhere or LFG ques, Open world dungeons too, they help. Man, almost to the end of a dungeon and die without a rez, you quit cause you don't have the time to fight your way back down. PvP actually did have meaning where reputations and competition was fierce, faction pride was strong as well. Fight to do base take downs or even change cities alignments. I personally miss all the nuances and hope "The Repopulation" is very similar.
"The King and the Pawn return to the same box at the end of the game"
Comments
So... what you're saying is --- THIS IS YOUR FAULT!
One of the best games developed in the past few years is Minecraft. What a great game. But I really don't play it that much anymore. As soon as the game presents a challenge or requires me to do something tedious, I am to tempted to go into Creative Mode. I can't seem to get away from it. Even if I set the game so it's not there, I eventually breakdown and edit the DAT file and allow it. I give it too easy. So the game got boring because I take shortcuts when the are available.
This is similar to what has happened to MMOs. Too many things are just given now, no effort no accomplishment so no reward value. In an effort to reduce the grind, Devs have shot themselves in the foot.
Looking at: The Repopulation
Preordering: None
Playing: Random Games
That's a LIE. Players have a choice of putting on gear and skills to do any task they want, and it promotes team work and synergy.
For the record I'm not championing anything. The Secret World is far from perfect but they got the dungeon mechanics and questing right especially on Nightmare which introduced mechanics that challenged people.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Mostly, but I think the blame falls on players. Games are made easier and more casual to target a large audience, so it's profitable enough to make up for the huge amount of money it costs these days to make a game. In order to be a successful niche game with the difficulty the most vocal of the base are asking for, developers would need to lower the overall quality of the game (content, graphics, etc) in order to remain in business while purposefully targeting a smaller audience. Except, by doing this, they then alienate a significant portion of even that base, who will turn up their noses at the game because the graphics aren't comparable with current/next-gen AAAs.
Gamers are their own worst enemies.
"Forums aren't for intelligent discussion; they're for blow-hards with unwavering opinions."
Let us not forget the fact the back in the day it was pretty awsome, to play with other people in a game online, the possiblities were endless. It was the newness of the internet that made most MMOS and any mutiplayer game awasome in itself.
Now we know we cant just make a game without having invencible guards to help protect you from grifers when in town, and we know that most MMOS people do not role play or even socialize, which back in the days of UO that was the coolest thing was to be able to interact with people online.
MMOS have been reduced to untility and function, and "look what I have that you dont have" and play ground for the over ambitious whos only goal is to achieve for the sake of it, forget the story, or the expierence in itself
No,There still hard mmo. But real question is: Are there hypocritical devs?
And answer:Yes,you are.
Really,no really.
Dude you game is easy as 2+2.And we all know it's 4,but your fans don't know that,because they are EX-Call of Duty Fan.So stop making up lies and thinking.
When I'm having more fun in an indie mmo that just came out that is as old school as EQ, with no map and I almost die at the very first mobs, it tells me yeah they have become too easy. If a sense of challenge and immersion with hardly any graphic quality or AAA features is more fun to play, then yep.
By the way, if anyone is interested in the game I'm referring to it's an indie old school type mmo, The Hammers End. Jjust came out and it's fairly fun.
http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/956/The-Hammers-End.html
I haven't read most of the replies, so I apologise if I'm repeating anything.
I think it's wrong to tie difficulty and interest. I played EQ2 in '06 and it was terribly boring. It was difficult, getting around was slow, and so I spent most of my time traveling to places while trying to avoid mobs, sometimes dying and going back weakened to collect my shard, which often resulted in another death, and finally getting to the place of the quest, spending time fighting a difficult battle with a beetle or something, and going back to the quest giver. It was terribly terribly boring. It was boring because the quests were boring and because they took so much time, and spending hours to do a pretty meaningless quest isn't rewarding.
These days EQ2 still has many boring quests, but at least they are easier. They still take time, they're not always a walk in the park, but they're generally easier and it's possible to get to them more quickly, and that at least means that you're spending less time getting bored out of your mind and more time doing a variety of things. (And EQ2 added good low level content which makes at least the low levels more interesting.)
I agree that difficulty matters, which is why I liked the ability to set a difficulty level in City of Heroes (my favourite MMO), but the claim that difficult makes things interesting is simply wrong.
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.? -Albert Einstein
"The ability to speak doesn't make you intelligent" - Qui-gon Jinn. After many years of reading Internet forums, there's no doubt that neither does the ability to write.
So if you notice that I'm no longer answering your nonsense, stop trying... because you just joined my block list.
Both solo games and MMO's have become too easy, on both PC and consoles. Some might say consoles did not have as far to fall, but you can see it across gaming.
And you are going to see more of it, those social media types don't want difficulty, they want Angry Birds as a MMO. They are the new potential playerbase and there are millions more of them out there than us playing MMO's at the moment.
Todays MMO's are not made for the people who were there from their foundation, tomorrows MMO's will not be made for you.
Well said Mark; you wrote what I've been thinking, what I've been saying on the WoW forums for years. Frankly, I'm shocked that anyone that was part of creating WoW gets it at all. I gave up on that ever happening the day Mists of Pandaria was announced.
Frankly though, I'm skeptical that you really get it. The depth of an MMOG doesn't come from having 40-player raids instead of 5-player instances, it's what you do as a dev team with those things. Solo play, even, can be as deep and challenging as any raid; I suggest taking a look at the Green Fire quest for Warlocks in WoW as an example. I suggest you remember the old WoW instances and compare them to the newer raids - which gave more of a sense of accomplishment? Yeah, it's not about numbers of players, it's about the developers thinking about the entire game and creating something meaningful and challenging all the way through.
The fact is, even the most hardcore raider spends much of his time playing alone, and what WoW has done is make all that time outside of raids feel like a chore, at best. Have they got more of a percentage of the players doing instances? Absolutely, and that looks good on paper, but what those players are doing is running something they feel like they have to in order to keep up with the proverbial Jones family. Back in the original game it was kind of a pain in the butt to set up an instance run - but people did it because they WANTED to, not because they felt they had to.
Have played: Everquest, Asheron's Call, Horizons, Everquest2, World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online, Warhammer, Age of Conan, Darkfall
Well if u want make money with mmo game, its need be casual game. there is more casual players then hardcore players.
to make game only for hardcore players is like shooting self leg.
What i dislike current mmos is that leveling is too fast.
Raids turned smaller partys, no mmo feel there.
Yes, got play Vanilla WoW and then WoW how it is now, I could take on 5 mobs at once where when I played a Vanilla server I wiped 3 times in the starter area. Also elite mobs were elite, you needed a group to take them, I couldn't believe that I couldn't solo Hogger which is so easy now, unless they removed him since I played.
EQ2 is even easier, that game used to be so hard, you needed a group for everything, sadly it's been dumbed down more than WoW. My DK has Three useful skills that auto heal you and do damage over time, I just hit them over and over and I can endlessly tank 10+ mobs. Such a shame how dumbed down EQ2 is....
I totally agree with what Mark has said, which is why I've abandoned so many games after beta-testing, and returned, time and time again, to old favourites like Vanguard. Why? Because although it may look clunky by modern standards, there is a depth to both the gameplay and the game world that keeps me enthralled and, most importantly, challenged. And I've been gaming since the Colossal Cave adventure, so believe me, that's a hell of a lot of play time!
I've become so tired of all the hype about the latest and greatest, which invariably means whizzy graphics and not much else, as everyone jumps on the "make it easy" bandwagon, and totally misses what the term "immersive" actually means. Smokeysong has the right of it, to keep me playing, it has to be meaningful and challenging *all the way through*.
Take Neverwinter for instance: a huge opportunity that has been totally squandered, and is only worth playing for some of the player-created scenarios. Some of these, although hidebound by the game engine, show true originality, humour and depth. The guys who wrote these scenarios are the ones that should be employed in the game industry, to bring back the days when I could get totally involved in a game, without feeling that it was just a grindfest.
Bingo!!
But casual doesn't mean people who don't want a challenge. casual means people who don't spend 12 hours a day in front of PC and believe in being more productive in real life.
Sadly for many players (as you can see from this topic) difficulty means lots of un necessay time sinks. The challenge should be in activity itself an not how much time it takes to do a certain task or how many times you die and spend another 20 to 30 minutes to get back in game. That is not challenge..that is tedium.
"The problem is that the hardcore folks always want the same thing: 'We want exactly what you gave us before, but it has to be completely different.'
-Jesse Schell
"Online gamers are the most ludicrously entitled beings since Caligula made his horse a senator, and at least the horse never said anything stupid."
-Luke McKinney
Eleanor Rigby.
I'm playing Granado Espada (once known as Swords of the New World) lately. There are a HEAP of bugs, the quests line system is generally confusing and somewhat frustrating, and the game can be played 80% afk.
And yet I'm loving it. Even the frustration from the intractible quest system has an odd "satisfied once done" factor to it. I'm right now attempting to get to the quest line that allows me to do the quest line to open up the "Master Stance" shop, and despite spending so far two entire days switching between the game, websites, my alt toons, I'm loving what I'm experiencing.
-Oscar
When I started WoW I could have made the same comparison from the games I had left to Vanilla WoW..
Possibly my experince in other games helped me, or it was because I played a paladin. I could kill anything non-elite in a few swings and elite mobs were the only thing that were anything like I was used to from other games.
Dungeons were a bit harder.. but usually due to the fact that often people werent used to group play.
I think this is where free to play can really shine. When I was playing wow, the thing that drove me was a sense of getting my moneys worth out of the sub. To me, and probably many others was getting to the highest level and competing for end game gear. Taking out the sub and the feeling of getting my moneys worth removes that. I'm not as driven to get to end game, or feeling like I have to play every minute of everyday. I can play casual and send some cash in the item store for the some boosts if I feel the need. The thing that bothers me the most about MMO's is the lack of feeling like I am in a living world. The one that comes the closest is EQ2. Mostly they feel like a multiplayer arcade.
I agree with him for 100%, and I think this post should be read by the majority of the MMO community. There once was a time where games had great dept and where players enjoyed the experiences in the world and were not rushing to endgame content.
Now everything is just a spoon fed theme park where everything is about instant gratification. I hope the genre changes for the better in the coming years, and I do believe this will happen. It seems finally (for me it has been since years) the majority of MMO players are sick of these dumbed down, shallow games.
They remove all the nuances thus simplifying the games. I remember SWG when there was no speeders or creature mounts. Leaving and adventuring out into the world felt like it meant something. You did everything imaginable to stay alive and learned survival due to a fear of having to traverse that treacherous path again and again. No teleporting anywhere or LFG ques, Open world dungeons too, they help. Man, almost to the end of a dungeon and die without a rez, you quit cause you don't have the time to fight your way back down. PvP actually did have meaning where reputations and competition was fierce, faction pride was strong as well. Fight to do base take downs or even change cities alignments. I personally miss all the nuances and hope "The Repopulation" is very similar.