I have been saying this for a long time. I enjoyed Vanilla Wow up until Lich King expansion. After Cataclysm Bliuzzard more and more kiddified the game.
Everquest 2 had a very difficult challenging crafting system. I thought it was fun, again they followed World of Warcraft in their Kiddification.
This trend is ruining MMO's for players who want a challenge and a game that is in depth. That is also one reason why Eve online has a strong base still. Eve online is very challenging. It also is the only spaceship based MMO.
I truly hope that Everquest Next is true to the model of Everquest I because that game was a true challenge. When you earned something you felt you worked hard for it and deserved it.
Nirrtix ALPHAs: -Pantheon -Shroud of the Avatar -Camelot Unchained BETAs: -World of Warcraft -City of Heroes -Star Wars Galaxies -Saga of Ryzom -Homeworld -Starcraft II -Warcraft III -Hearthstone -Star Wars The Old Republic -Vanguard Saga of Heroes
Long Answer . I think it is a reflection of society today . Example 10 or 15 years ago a game that took time and was hard to achieve game goals was the best thing ever. Because you felt like you did acutely achieve something. Your hard work paid off .
Today we live is a world where people want everything NOW! And if Joe Blow has it , Why cant I ? I should have it also . Most now have a entitled mentality . I think because of this games have gone to the F2P market witch is ruining games IMO. You get a unfinished game for free yes but if you want the real content you must pay X dollars for X equipment or X mount. I like the Sub based model because you pay one flat fee and everyone is on equal ground in the game . You can have your cake and eat it too .
Also I think people Younger then 25 have lost the critical thinking skills and problem-solving skills . Before we would retain information we learned . Now we retain a lot less . In a world of Google we don't have to remember we can just Google it . But what if Google is wrong ? What if the information changes to fit the mold of the direction "Leaders" want us to follow. How would you know its right or wrong ? ( critical thinking ) And that is why games in general are easy .
Could be to a degree. In general knowledge and routine of gameplay have improved. But more I would say once were too hard because of forced grouping with too many quests. Now this is gone and I do not miss not even minimally. I do not like or want just rushing through game, from time to time to die is normal .... but from time to time to die ... not to survive from time to time on ones own.
Many posters here fail to understand what Mark really meant. They point to the many new MMO titles coming out almost monthly and the many more players the genre has now than in years past and say the genre is more successful than ever. From a financial standpoint, they are correct.
But Mark's comments were more in reference to how prior to WOW MMO's were released with far more diversity between them, as developers explored various designs and mechanics to deliver MMORPG's to the market, and most games really did feel very different from each other.
Once Blizzard succeeded in the way that it did, we saw a mass homiginization of design, where most major titles copied significant portions of WOW's design (sometimes right down to the exact same interface) with only a few subtle variations between them.
Instead of MMO's being long term playing experiences, they've changed to short term games which players buy in great quantity, but quickly consume the content and toss it aside after a month or three, much like a single player game which not coincidentally most MMO's have largely become.
In fact, most titles offer so little in terms of entertainment you can't even convince people to pay for them, and very quickly after launch they have to be given away in order to get anyone to actually play them, because at the end of the day, they just aren't worth the money.
So yes, more people play MMO's than ever before, yet MMORPG's have just a shadow of what they were or could have become had they followed a different evolutionary path. (in terms of entertainment, not profit)
People make reference to MMO's in the past being Model T's, and today's games being more like a Lexus.
It's actually vice-versa, the games of the past were more complicated and diverse, and today's titles have all been boiled down to a solid, accessible model much like a Toyota Camry or Honda Accord, meanwhile all of the high end sports car's have been killed off because there isn't enough of a market for them.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Since the mod directed me here I will just post my response to a post here.
Fallen Earth
FFXI
Eve Online
Perpetum Online
Darkfall
Age Of Wushu
Ryzom
Xsyon
First let's get something clear, most of the games listed are old or indie dev, small funds etc.
FFXI very old and with FFXIV coming out a lot will probably move over to there. EVE is good, no objection yet I do not enjoy sci fi that much which is why I am not sticking to it. Perpetum is essentially same as EVE just mechs, I'd take EVE over PO any day. Darkfall, dying game and in bad state without devs caring sadly, I played it for 2 months. AoW haven't tried, testing it tonight. Ryzom another old game which is kind of what I was NOT asking for. Xsyon I have no idea about. Looking at most of those games though they are either ancient with ancient graphics, clunky gameplay, dying or EVE.
Reading up about FE: Faction oriented PVP in designated areas. Yeah not gonna touch that.
It's actually vice-versa, the games of the past were more complicated and diverse, and today's titles have all been boiled down to a solid, accessible model much like a Toyota Camry or Honda Accord, meanwhile all of the high end sports car's have been killed off because there isn't enough of a market for them.
I understand where you are going but i cannot totally agree because one of my favourite MMO's was 'Earth & Beyond' which could never be called complicated in any way at all or even a massive diversion from space games that had come before (other than being an MMO) but it managed to mix action, materials collection, crafting and loads of social interaction into one great package. It had a dedicated player base that were very active in and out of the game because it just did what it did well.
The other thing that does irk me a little about this whole thread is that if this thirst for a more 'hardcore' game was so big then surely some of these games would have survived or not been changed in the way that they have, but in my own experience of WoW i have seen the people that consider themselves the more hardcore base do the same thing since Vanilla and that is drop in, burn through content at a hugely accelerated rate and drop out again until the next expansion and no pay-to-play model can survive with that type of customer, so what choice were they left with?
It must be Thursday, i never could get the hang of Thursdays.
I just hit 90 on my first char in WoW, myself i am a weirdo that enjoys the leveling more then max level, not a raider or hardcore pvp'er so what is there once at max level?
My first mmo is everquest and my top char is 71 there and i played on and off since may 2001, speaking of everquest i just spen't like 3 hours in chardok working my cleric at lvl 68 down to the king for my epic drop, to bad i fell down trough a fake floor and died from king + 10 or so adds still i had fun and made 9 aa in the process, only challenge left in wow is doing world pvp at say 87 Vs a 90, you hit him for 900 he hits you back for 50k, you hit for 1200 he hits for 120k game over
In my book the gear scaling is insane in WoW a lvl 90 with there 65% Vs a lvl 87-88 is a no brainer, my guardian druid at lvl 87 with i would say ok gear, 75k armor and 190ish k hp drops like a rock against one lvl 90 rogue, even when using dmg mitigation and 120k heal pot, fight was over in like 2-3 seconds, bit silly.
If the author means that the genre was destroyed by making it appear to all and sundry like something that only someone with too much time on their hands could enjoy, then yes. As someone who played WoW 1.0, and Everquest, I can attest to both of those games having no difficulty whatsoever, it was simply a time investment. Sit down. Click. Click. Click. Click your way to victory! Then the rotations! One. Two. Three. Four. Three. One. One. One! Then the addons for healing, and the entirely mindless raids, with the prerequisites of a week of grinding for consumable sets.
Yes, they ruined a genre by making people think it was that. You had people who loved that, and people who hated it. "A game which requires no skill but I can look cool in? I'm so down with that!"
So you had these people in their Tier whatever gear who felt special and better than other people. So the MMO genre got a reputation for being only for basement dwellers. It became a laughingstock. People who played games which required a little more skill -- such as spectacle fighters, one vs. one fighters, strategy games, or FPS games -- were amused and filled with pity. They found the prospect of a persistent game with loads of other players, but the construct was just too somnambulant for them to endure. They could feel the seconds of their lives ticking away, yet they felt no achievement for this.
The way MMOs are going now actually introduces more skill. Things like exploration and even jumping puzzles require more than the usual, and even The Secret World had stealth and adventure (a la point & click) sections, all of which required either reflexes, muscle memory, logic, or the ability to research well. These are skills, these actually eschew the complete lack of skill that WoW had. So I call shenanigans on the author and I'm inclined to believe that Firefall will be WoW all over again because of it. MMOs haven't been becoming less hardcore, they've becoming ever so slightly more so.
And please, for the pride of all of us, let's not consider 126-hour gaming weeks to constitute any kind of skill other than not having a job, or a social life, or friends, or any semblance of humanity. I always hated this notion that time was a relevant substitute for ksill. And really, if combat can't be done in a way which requires skill due to the latency, if the technology isn't there yet, then... don't include combat. How about an MMO which is just exploration, jumping puzzles, research, and logical puzzles? I'd be all for that. Sort of like the bits that were actually good in Guild Wars 2 and The Secret World.
Let's have MMOs that required skill. Where skill doesn't mean "I haven't slept in three days and I have terrible body odour."
Let's keep in mind that people have died playing WoW, simply because they were so addicted to a game that just kept rewarding them over and over with an endless chain of candy, not for having skill, but for having the free time to just sit there. WoW is the anti-thesis of good health or skill, and I'm glad that MMOs are moving away from it. Yes, Blizzard did damage, and the damage they did was making MMO gamers look like unsocialised basement dwellers.
Originally posted by IridescentOrk Yes, and ADHD friendly. I don't see nothing wrong witth this. I got a real job and other challenges to deal with. No need for more.
Yeah, that's exactly my point.
When you look at things, may people have;
A job;
A fulfilling social life;
A life partner;
Kids;
And more.
This sums up the Penny Arcade crew as well, which is why they stopped playing WoW. There comes a point where you just have to stop throwing your life away. I've had a couple of MMO hopes but I tend to be let down, mostly I stick with single- or multi-player games for that very reason. I've found a 15-minute session of Dungeonland or Mass Effect 3 to be more fulfilling than a year's worth of MMO gaming.
I've mentioned this before, but the MMO is a con for those who have too much time on your hands.
"Want to feel special? Want to be incredible? Want to attract airheaded amazons in sternum-busting chainmail bikinis? Want to be something other than a useless spud? Come to our MMO! Here, we'll reward you for pushing buttons for days and days on end. Just be careful you don't die."
Most MMOs, I find, are just a dressed up version of Cow Clicker. You have some that break from the mould to a degree -- you have the logic puzzling and research of The Secret World, and you have the jumping puzzles of Guild Wars 2, but both of those games still have horrendously bad content which is still mostly based around time. In TSW and GW2, you don't really get better, you just spend time to get better abilities or gear, and it's always that way.
There's a reason why MMOs don't have difficulty settings. Let that percolate for a moment.
It's because MMOs, by and large, are automatically on Very Very Easy. The thing is though is by not having a difficulty slider, the player doesn't have to know that the game they're playing is Very Very Easy, and they're lulled into thinking that they're hardcore and amazing, by the time investment (and thus the money investment) they provide. That's a damned shame. It comes to a point then where that player feels that they can only be amazing in that game or that subset of games, and then they feel that all other games must automatically be terrible, because they suck at games which actually require some semblance of skill.
I play all sorts of games, me. I play strategy games; I play point & click adventures; I play FPS games; I play RPGs; I play board games; I play spectacle fighters; I play one-on-one fighters, and so on. And I'm not bad at them. The thing is though is that I'd trounce just about any WoW player at Street Fighter II, despite not being at the top of my game. They'd just dismiss this as Street Fighter II being sucky, and having terrible controls or whatever other excuses would be made, to dissolve back into the honeyed depths of the amazingly easy MMO.
Everquest was easy, it just took time. WoW was easy, it just took time. What we're beginning to slowly see, however, are games that do things which require some semblance of skill. As I mentioned, the jumping puzzles of GW2 and the logical puzzles/research of TSW required some semblance of skill.
If latency gets in the way of a truly skill-based combat system, I just want to see a game which focuses around jumping and logical puzzles, then. I'd be fine with that. So long as it requires me to use [i]some[/i] part of my brain.
There's a person earlier in the thread who basically said that they turn their brain off when they play Everquest. That's exactly how it is, that's how it was with EQ and WoW. You just turn your brain off and you become lulled by this incredibly easy game which anyone could play. It's ambrosia for those who won't even try to play a game. And when you try to get them to play a game that has skill to prove their skills, they dismiss it as a bad game.
There was this one time I tried to get a WoW player to complete VVVVVV, they were [i]horrible[/i] at it. So the first excuse was bad controls. I rocked it. Their excuse then was that I was cheating, or screwing with them somehow, and they just dismissed it after that.
So yeah.
More games which are based around skill in the MMO space, please. Even if it's only jumping/logical puzzles.
Anything.
Not just the time-consuming grind with the chain of rewards for those who do naught but sit on their rear pushing food pellet buttons.
Originally posted by EQN13 YESNot since EQ 1 has there been a game that actually had any real challenge.I played EQ 1 for 6 years before finally giving up. I haven't had a game hold my attention for more than a year since.WoW and other games has made leveling a single player event with no fear what so ever of death. People can be D bags in chat with no repercussions. Gear score is the ONLY thing that matters no matter how good or bad you are at playing your character or what kind of person you are. If you were lucky and got carried a couple of times and your gear score is higher than the person who actually KNOWS how to play their character, it doesn't matter. I have high hopes for EQ Next being something special. I want death exps loss. I want naked corpse runs. I want trains. I want to NOT be safe ANYWHERE. I want Sand Giants to be in level 7 zones. I don't want ANY auction house. I want hell levels that take 4 weeks to get thru. Even lev 1 to lev 2 should take HOURS, NOT minutes. I want it to take me a year to get max level. I want agro KOS mobs that can't be shaken unless I zone. I don't want add ons that tell me where the fire will land. I don't want big yellow ? over the heads of quest givers. MAKE ME FIND QUESTS! When I do get a quest, make it send me all over the place to collect 10 HARD TO FIND things. Make killing mobs challenging and require grouping. NO CLASS BALANCING. A cleric should not be able to solo as easy as a Necro or a warrior.Keep PVP on dedicated servers with their OWN RULES. Don't nerf me because of PVP cry babies. Force downtime. I remember "meddling" for 10 minutes just to kill another mob. and that's if a SG didn't kill me while doing it.I want to have to "camp" a random mob that may not spawn for 2 days. I know people hate that idea, but I camped ragefire for my Epic for 3 days. I felt like I accomplished something when I finally got it.Not evey player in the game should have an Epic. Just those who WORKED for it. Sorry if that hurts someones feeling.Life isn't fair. People who work for a living get more than those that don't. It's LIFE, GET USED TO IT. So sick of this No one left behind BS. Cut off the "welfare" checks in gaming. Yes I know I am basically asking for EQ1 with new graphics, but honestly that's exactly what I want. Nothing wrong with that.I'd rather play a game with 500,000 players that enjoy a HARD mmo than 12 million cry baby "gimme" players. PS SUBSCRIPTION!! NO PAY TO WIN!
Excellent post, and I totally agree with all points! Posters who trivialize the grind and suggest it has nothing to do with a game's difficulty, can you also say that completing a marathon is not difficult? That simply require a daily grind (running) for a few months. Not difficult at all, right?
Luckily, i don't need you to like me to enjoy video games. -nariusseldon. In F2P I think it's more a case of the game's trying to play the player's. -laserit
That depends on whose definition of "easy" you're using. It all boils down to this...
1. People are like electricity... given the option, they will almost always take the path of least resistance.
2. Devs (and the people who pay their salaries) are people.
Why spend incredible amounts of time and money building an MMO that a select group of players will enjoy, when you can spend less time and money building an MMO that will attract more players and requires little more than copy/pasting what somebody else has done?
Keep this in mind: The OP used WoW to demonstrate how easy MMOs have become in the past 15 years. What he failed to mention in his article is that many of the "quality of life" changes that have been added to WoW were created by the players first, by way of add-ons. These are changes that the players themselves wanted. All Blizzard did was listen.
The vast majority of current players of MMORPGs seems to prefer "ease of use" over "grind 'til you're blind". ::shrug:: Go figure.
Yes, too simple. People gripe about having to grind mobs back in the days of EQ and UO, but within that process they also got to know people, made new friends and actually enjoyed the process. It was NOT really a grind, it was a journey through a game. I miss the shouts asking for more players in a specific dungeon. It made the games feel alive.
I will say that most the crafting has been dumbed down. I play games like ATITD and Planet Calypso and their systems are by NO means dumbed down. It takes a long time to get anywhere and I truly wish the big developers would do better at the crafting/harvesting sides of the games. I do appreciate some of the shortcuts, but I sincerely believe they have added way too many. I used to play for months up to as long as years...but now, I am lucky to stay a month or two before I try the next game.
Originally posted by Lonestryder It's now time for the Model T Fords of the MMORPG genre to embrace the mass-market, easy access, high money-making vehicles they are - no apologies needed.
Funny how it always a "Model T Ford."
How about a 1965 Corvette? Would you rather drive that or a spanking new 2013 Prius?
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse. - FARGIN_WAR
I really stoped playing MMO's for that reason, the games are hollow and only the end game matters, and the end game is repetitive and without pourpose.
Who wants to kill the same thing in the same place 100's of times in a row? Thats non sense.
Even though EVE isnt everyones cup of tea, the industry should try to learn from what it makes right.
Theres no end game in EVE, EVE is all about the journey. There are levels, but they really dont matter that much as most specializations trains very fast.
The noob and the "pro" are equally important to the life of the guilds there, and players craft their own histories, theres pratically no quests - repetitove and meaningless content - only the activities a group does and its interactions with the other groups there.
And thats what I expect from game nowadays. I want that the steel sword I got in the begining is near as effective as the steel sword I get 1 years forth. Steel is steel and it cuts the same.
What should matter is the player interactions with the environment and betwen themselves. Not a string of quests.
Its really sad that most games invest so much in graphical assets like entire detailed zones that are only used at the start of a game and are never visited again, because the player level outclassed it.
Great Article, one of the Firefall Beta testers has written an excellent description about the problem that absolutely EVERY developer should read anf think about it while designing games
REPOST FROM THE FIREFALL FORUMS:
OK.
Scaling.
There are some things that require scaling, but there are other things that scaling can absolute destroy a game.
If you remove the " bad scaling", you dont even have to aknowledge the concept of power creep. Because its like preventing cancer.
If we are to limit the idea of Scaling to Progression, then we have to aknowledge the different character progression systems and the different types of progression.
Progression systems: skill based level based tier based
Skill based is the term we used to give to Ultima Online, Dark Fall, Link Realms... You Progress by repetition of a skill. A full featured activity is called a skill. A skill back then did not meant an ability or a spell. So every different type of activity, such as fishing or blacksmithing was a skill. It was synonymous to proficiency or job.
Then we got the influence from Dungeons and Dragons Progression system, and then the level based systems came. You see, in the realm of ideas and methods of quantifying numerically progression, the level based one was always one of the poorest and less thought out.
We had GURPS, we have World of Darkness and whole other Progression systems from pen and paper RPGs that were much better for dozens of reasons.
The problem was that level based system provided a single number to rule them all. Your level. And this is another area where people started cutting corners. Lets go with level based system, its simpler, it was more convenient. It was an abstraction of Progression.
It is on level based systems that the cancer of scaling started.
They cut corners on scaling too. So you had a single number, the level and then you applied a paralel number or a variable and you managed to get Scaling.
At this point you have to think where the need for Scale actually comes from. What justifies it? Why does it have to have Scaling?
Now, if step out of the level based conceptual prison back into the skill based, or GURPS or World of Darkness or other pen and paper roleplaying game that did not made use of the level measure, you will find out the answer!
It wasnt the same thing we call Scaling today.
Have you heard of Progress Quest? It is an automated program that is a mockery of Scaling. Some people who dont know better say its a mockery of grind. You are level 1, you kill level 1 enemies with level 1 weapons to get level 1 loot... You repeat it a few times and then you become level 2 and then you fighting level 2 enemies with level 2 weapons to get level 2 loot... You get the idea.
The problem with Scaling, is that it ruins the imunologic system of the game, like an antibiotic.
People face a challenge they cant defeat, they complain and cry about it. So the developer goes and fixes. Over time on this cycle of people crying and developers fixing, we got a very "evolved scalling system". Wich is a devolution for the game industry nonetheless. Its similar to a mother dumping antibiotics on its child and washing its hands.
The alternative to all that is not take the antibiotic. You cant defeat the Orcs, then dont go on their territory until you can.
Now what the developers did? They prevented people from going to the Orcs territory. So they made a system that was fool-proof. You need level 15 to go to the Orcs territory. So those crying childs that were level 5 and died at the Orcs territory stopped complaining because they could not go there anymore. That was the "antidote" for the problem. That was the misuse of Scaling. To make fool-proof designs. Scripted experiences. Strictly defined difficulty curves and experiences.
This is also part of the pizza of how Freedom died and how we became hostage to "the need for Balance". There were other main elements, but this too.
Now, Scaling originally was something entirelly different. It was based on common sense, critic sense. Reward Ratios, Difficulty Ratios, Time and Effort Ratios, Efficiency Ratios. Everything was well thought out and hand placed on the world. Some people might come and say that there was no Scaling. No. It was different.
So people knew they would find Dragons on Caves and top of Volcanoes and rarelly would meet them in their path from one town to another. Now, Dragons are known to be deadly enemies. People knew they were NOT supposed to take on Dragons. Due to the fact that if you pay artists and special effects guys and sound guys and animators and a bunch of abilities for Dragons, you cant have the Dragons not be played. Otherwise you are wasting your money and resources developping Dragons, right? This is a big problem. Because then developers started to make sure every single little thing they spent their times working on had to be experienced by everyone! But what about Dragons being difficult and so on? That went out of the window. The need to make use of content, generated a problem. We call it nowadays Entitlement.
Since everything became designed to be experienced. Everyone started to expect to experience everything. This included winning, of course! Now, this Entitlement problem, screwed Difficulty/Challenge. I could go on and on about cultural shifts, public education and vaccines and whatnot. But I will just keep on game design. So over time, people started to be handled like idiots and many of them are not idiots. Fool-proof design for the minimum common denominator, everyone entitled to win, be a hero, experience all content, and have no difficulty, become no different, achieve nothing really meaningful...
Now, can you puzzle all the pieces to understand how Scaling fits in? Now, tell me. Do you think Firefall Progression system really needs Scaling? Of what? When? Why? How? Have you thought of consequences of Scaling things?
The only scalling we need, derives from common sense. If something is hard, then it is hard. If its hard, then it must be rewarding. If it takes time and effort, then it must be rewarding.
How about multiple players, consortium of agents, a bunch of people working together. Should we scale things to the number of players? Should we limit the number of players? Both of those are bullshit.
The need to scale difficulty to number of players. The need to scale down rewards by number of players. Also bullshit.
There are only a few relations of scaling that makes sense and are necessary. Time and Effort generating progression, check. Difficulty stuff becoming mitigated by more people, check. Difficulty being mitigated by progression generated by time and effort, check.
See, another bullshit, is the idea that difficulty has to keep up magically with the player. This was never a true need in design. There were Dragons, there were noobs, and there were powerfull warriors and mages characters that could kill those Dragons, maybe. And there were Demigods that players character could never kill. There was no bullshit Dragons for noob characters to kill.
The idea that the developer can assert the income rate of player characters through some level scaling. Rewards scaled with difficulty, with rarity and that was it. There was no direct scaling between progression and rewards. No bullshit level 1 player earning level 1 gold, and level 10 player earning level 10 gold. The content is there, its reward is X, whoever can tackles said content, earns that x reward. The reward is independent of the player character progression.
So basically the design that works is this: you define difficulty, then you define rarity, then you define rewards. Then people of whatever levels and in whatever numbers come and go for it. Thats how it was originally.
Then these "evolutions" came and arbitrariely/artificially started make not only fool-proof designs, but smart-proof designs. We all became restricted to a linear experience, a linear difficulty, a linear progression, a linear income. Everyone on the same boat. Clones. Like criminals in a prison. No Freedom.
There was a time when I played games. Now I game games.
There was nothing wrong with the Dragons on the mountains with their piles of gold and treasure.
All you have to do is make a Progression system that makes sense. Like, from Tier 1 to Tier 5, you can get up to X power. And thats it. And then design enemies for different numbers of players at different tiers, place them arbitrarily as content where they make sense, in the frequency they make sense, with the reward that makes sense.
Then people roam free and do their thing. Kill colorfull fluffy things on the starting areas, or go be hunted in Mordor. You see, a minimalistic scaling.
Everything else creates a layer a problems that cannot be dealt with.
All you have to do to get it right, is know the full range of capabilities given to players so that when you decide something is difficult, it is actually difficult for the top tier of the players and then you appropriatelly place it where it makes sense and attribute a reward that makes sense for it. Do it for everything. Once the dynamic events, spawns, seeds, etc are all set in motion. Let the players common sense do their scaling.
"are you going through the Orcs area, or through the Laracna cave passageway or are you going to take the ferryboat?" Thats it!
We had so many detrimental changes in pretty much every aspect of game design... such as how death is trivial and meaningless and how players are constantly in a bubble from start to finish.
There are ways to address every single one of these issues without resorting to creating more problems. But people need to start aknowledging some harsh truths. They need to evolve their maturity. Our design "evolution" actually caused the opposite effect and people cant handle the linearity/scaling/handholding/panoptic prison design. Many of the reasons for systematic failures come from these.
People feel it, but they just dont know how to express it or evidence what causes it.
The only way we are going to save the genre is to stop and look at what when wrong and start to make fixes.
We have to get away from quest hubs and make people go into the community and interact with the locals. Don’t instantly record my encounter in a log but instead make me write down what I gathered from those conversations along with all of my erroneous assumptions.
We need surprise and awe. If I go out and start farming goats for experience or skill I would hope that somewhere down the road I get hold of a uber goat who turns around and kicks my arse. This would make me pay attention to what I am doing.
The list goes on and on but basically we need to go in another direction. We should consider horizontal progression systems verses the current vertical ones. We need to let players decide what they are and not some pre-defined class. If I want to be a cloth wearing tank that uses a spoon as a weapon, I should have that option.
Basically, the current cookie cutter MMO is failing and we need to do something to resurrect the genre.
Yes but that isn't everything. They have become way to cookie cutter, boring, rail based. I miss the days when a new MMO came out and it brought something next gen. every MMO launch now is copy / paste some other MMO idea.
Originally posted by Kuro1n Simple and easy, everyone gets everything served on silver platters. Games should be challenging and what is the meaning of having the epic weapon if everyone else also has the epic weapon? MMORPGs became too much of games and too little of worlds, every company is trying to make a balanced game with esportz for all the cool kids because that is what is popular these days. I'm not bitter at all.
Lol what ? There is 0 mmorpgs that are eligible for esports.
Originally posted by Doogiehowser MMOS were never tough or difficult. They were just too time consuming. Unless people equate time sinks with challenge?
Time sinks are challenge. They're individual player challenge. I don't care how good you are at a game, there is no amount of skill you can develop that overcomes the screaming wife or neglected baby (or neglected wife and screaming baby, take your pick). I remember way back when in EverQuest, the people who got their significant others to play, got to play more AND advanced faster than the folks who had to deal with "wife aggro". Also, time sinks, as you call them, can be a consequence of challenge. Again, hearkening back to EQ, breaking into the Plane of Fear. It was challenging (at least at one time) and the consequence of failure was possible personal ruin (all your gear, stuck in the plane on a corpse that you can't get). Death penalties are time sinks? Sure, maybe for those people who died a lot. But for those people who only died in the best possible situation (on raids), there was no time sink. Rez up and keep plowing.
Mark, the tools you describe seem to require inordinate amounts of those oh so rare commodities: time and budget. Your game isn't not meant for a wide audience so using it as some point of comparison is flawed. When you were making WoW, you said in your previous article that you were shooting for a wide audience. A game that operates the way you suggest will not be widely accessible for that very reason. The wide audience knows WoW's way of doing things and, by and large, they're not open to changing. As successful as Guild Wars 2 is, I'm almost positive that Mike Morhaime is not stockpiling Tums because GW2 is scaring him. GW2 is widely successful among the gamer set but Joe Casual probably has no idea it even exists (or he's poo-pooing it because it doesn't have Blizzard's name on it).
One reason people were so disappointed in The Old Republic is because Bioware had the time and budget (or the budget to make up for time) to really be innovative and they spent their money in an area whose novelty wears off quickly. "Wow, this is immersive" *spacebar spacebar spacebar* Heck, A Tale in the Desert has some innovative systems (especially at its core) but how many people have even heard of it? The same can be said for Horizo...err, Istaria. If a tree falls in the forest....yes it makes a sound but no one hears it.
I like your ideas but I think you'd need a budget the size of the Pentagon's to pull it off on the scale necessary to revolutionize and revitalize the genre.
Comments
I have been saying this for a long time. I enjoyed Vanilla Wow up until Lich King expansion. After Cataclysm Bliuzzard more and more kiddified the game.
Everquest 2 had a very difficult challenging crafting system. I thought it was fun, again they followed World of Warcraft in their Kiddification.
This trend is ruining MMO's for players who want a challenge and a game that is in depth. That is also one reason why Eve online has a strong base still. Eve online is very challenging. It also is the only spaceship based MMO.
I truly hope that Everquest Next is true to the model of Everquest I because that game was a true challenge. When you earned something you felt you worked hard for it and deserved it.
Nirrtix
ALPHAs:
-Pantheon
-Shroud of the Avatar
-Camelot Unchained
BETAs:
-World of Warcraft
-City of Heroes
-Star Wars Galaxies
-Saga of Ryzom
-Homeworld
-Starcraft II
-Warcraft III
-Hearthstone
-Star Wars The Old Republic
-Vanguard Saga of Heroes
Short Answer YES!
Long Answer . I think it is a reflection of society today . Example 10 or 15 years ago a game that took time and was hard to achieve game goals was the best thing ever. Because you felt like you did acutely achieve something. Your hard work paid off .
Today we live is a world where people want everything NOW! And if Joe Blow has it , Why cant I ? I should have it also . Most now have a entitled mentality . I think because of this games have gone to the F2P market witch is ruining games IMO. You get a unfinished game for free yes but if you want the real content you must pay X dollars for X equipment or X mount. I like the Sub based model because you pay one flat fee and everyone is on equal ground in the game . You can have your cake and eat it too .
Also I think people Younger then 25 have lost the critical thinking skills and problem-solving skills . Before we would retain information we learned . Now we retain a lot less . In a world of Google we don't have to remember we can just Google it . But what if Google is wrong ? What if the information changes to fit the mold of the direction "Leaders" want us to follow. How would you know its right or wrong ? ( critical thinking ) And that is why games in general are easy .
http://absoluteretribution.enjin.com/ Guild Website and Recruitment link
You said what needed to be said and you hit the problem right on the head.
Well said.
If it ain't dead you're not pressing 2 hard enough.
Many posters here fail to understand what Mark really meant. They point to the many new MMO titles coming out almost monthly and the many more players the genre has now than in years past and say the genre is more successful than ever. From a financial standpoint, they are correct.
But Mark's comments were more in reference to how prior to WOW MMO's were released with far more diversity between them, as developers explored various designs and mechanics to deliver MMORPG's to the market, and most games really did feel very different from each other.
Once Blizzard succeeded in the way that it did, we saw a mass homiginization of design, where most major titles copied significant portions of WOW's design (sometimes right down to the exact same interface) with only a few subtle variations between them.
Instead of MMO's being long term playing experiences, they've changed to short term games which players buy in great quantity, but quickly consume the content and toss it aside after a month or three, much like a single player game which not coincidentally most MMO's have largely become.
In fact, most titles offer so little in terms of entertainment you can't even convince people to pay for them, and very quickly after launch they have to be given away in order to get anyone to actually play them, because at the end of the day, they just aren't worth the money.
So yes, more people play MMO's than ever before, yet MMORPG's have just a shadow of what they were or could have become had they followed a different evolutionary path. (in terms of entertainment, not profit)
People make reference to MMO's in the past being Model T's, and today's games being more like a Lexus.
It's actually vice-versa, the games of the past were more complicated and diverse, and today's titles have all been boiled down to a solid, accessible model much like a Toyota Camry or Honda Accord, meanwhile all of the high end sports car's have been killed off because there isn't enough of a market for them.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Since the mod directed me here I will just post my response to a post here.
Fallen Earth
FFXI
Eve Online
Perpetum Online
Darkfall
Age Of Wushu
Ryzom
Xsyon
First let's get something clear, most of the games listed are old or indie dev, small funds etc.
FFXI very old and with FFXIV coming out a lot will probably move over to there. EVE is good, no objection yet I do not enjoy sci fi that much which is why I am not sticking to it. Perpetum is essentially same as EVE just mechs, I'd take EVE over PO any day. Darkfall, dying game and in bad state without devs caring sadly, I played it for 2 months. AoW haven't tried, testing it tonight. Ryzom another old game which is kind of what I was NOT asking for. Xsyon I have no idea about. Looking at most of those games though they are either ancient with ancient graphics, clunky gameplay, dying or EVE.
Reading up about FE: Faction oriented PVP in designated areas. Yeah not gonna touch that.
I understand where you are going but i cannot totally agree because one of my favourite MMO's was 'Earth & Beyond' which could never be called complicated in any way at all or even a massive diversion from space games that had come before (other than being an MMO) but it managed to mix action, materials collection, crafting and loads of social interaction into one great package. It had a dedicated player base that were very active in and out of the game because it just did what it did well.
The other thing that does irk me a little about this whole thread is that if this thirst for a more 'hardcore' game was so big then surely some of these games would have survived or not been changed in the way that they have, but in my own experience of WoW i have seen the people that consider themselves the more hardcore base do the same thing since Vanilla and that is drop in, burn through content at a hugely accelerated rate and drop out again until the next expansion and no pay-to-play model can survive with that type of customer, so what choice were they left with?
It must be Thursday, i never could get the hang of Thursdays.
I just hit 90 on my first char in WoW, myself i am a weirdo that enjoys the leveling more then max level, not a raider or hardcore pvp'er so what is there once at max level?
My first mmo is everquest and my top char is 71 there and i played on and off since may 2001, speaking of everquest i just spen't like 3 hours in chardok working my cleric at lvl 68 down to the king for my epic drop, to bad i fell down trough a fake floor and died from king + 10 or so adds
still i had fun and made 9 aa in the process, only challenge left in wow is doing world pvp at say 87 Vs a 90, you hit him for 900 he hits you back for 50k, you hit for 1200 he hits for 120k game over 
In my book the gear scaling is insane in WoW a lvl 90 with there 65% Vs a lvl 87-88 is a no brainer, my guardian druid at lvl 87 with i would say ok gear, 75k armor and 190ish k hp drops like a rock against one lvl 90 rogue, even when using dmg mitigation and 120k heal pot, fight was over in like 2-3 seconds, bit silly.
If the author means that the genre was destroyed by making it appear to all and sundry like something that only someone with too much time on their hands could enjoy, then yes. As someone who played WoW 1.0, and Everquest, I can attest to both of those games having no difficulty whatsoever, it was simply a time investment. Sit down. Click. Click. Click. Click your way to victory! Then the rotations! One. Two. Three. Four. Three. One. One. One! Then the addons for healing, and the entirely mindless raids, with the prerequisites of a week of grinding for consumable sets.
Yes, they ruined a genre by making people think it was that. You had people who loved that, and people who hated it. "A game which requires no skill but I can look cool in? I'm so down with that!"
So you had these people in their Tier whatever gear who felt special and better than other people. So the MMO genre got a reputation for being only for basement dwellers. It became a laughingstock. People who played games which required a little more skill -- such as spectacle fighters, one vs. one fighters, strategy games, or FPS games -- were amused and filled with pity. They found the prospect of a persistent game with loads of other players, but the construct was just too somnambulant for them to endure. They could feel the seconds of their lives ticking away, yet they felt no achievement for this.
The way MMOs are going now actually introduces more skill. Things like exploration and even jumping puzzles require more than the usual, and even The Secret World had stealth and adventure (a la point & click) sections, all of which required either reflexes, muscle memory, logic, or the ability to research well. These are skills, these actually eschew the complete lack of skill that WoW had. So I call shenanigans on the author and I'm inclined to believe that Firefall will be WoW all over again because of it. MMOs haven't been becoming less hardcore, they've becoming ever so slightly more so.
And please, for the pride of all of us, let's not consider 126-hour gaming weeks to constitute any kind of skill other than not having a job, or a social life, or friends, or any semblance of humanity. I always hated this notion that time was a relevant substitute for ksill. And really, if combat can't be done in a way which requires skill due to the latency, if the technology isn't there yet, then... don't include combat. How about an MMO which is just exploration, jumping puzzles, research, and logical puzzles? I'd be all for that. Sort of like the bits that were actually good in Guild Wars 2 and The Secret World.
Let's have MMOs that required skill. Where skill doesn't mean "I haven't slept in three days and I have terrible body odour."
Let's keep in mind that people have died playing WoW, simply because they were so addicted to a game that just kept rewarding them over and over with an endless chain of candy, not for having skill, but for having the free time to just sit there. WoW is the anti-thesis of good health or skill, and I'm glad that MMOs are moving away from it. Yes, Blizzard did damage, and the damage they did was making MMO gamers look like unsocialised basement dwellers.
That's now fixing itself. After all this time.
Yeah, that's exactly my point.
When you look at things, may people have;
Excellent post, and I totally agree with all points! Posters who trivialize the grind and suggest it has nothing to do with a game's difficulty, can you also say that completing a marathon is not difficult? That simply require a daily grind (running) for a few months. Not difficult at all, right?
Luckily, i don't need you to like me to enjoy video games. -nariusseldon.
In F2P I think it's more a case of the game's trying to play the player's. -laserit
"Have MMOs Become Too Easy?"
That depends on whose definition of "easy" you're using. It all boils down to this...
1. People are like electricity... given the option, they will almost always take the path of least resistance.
2. Devs (and the people who pay their salaries) are people.
Why spend incredible amounts of time and money building an MMO that a select group of players will enjoy, when you can spend less time and money building an MMO that will attract more players and requires little more than copy/pasting what somebody else has done?
Keep this in mind: The OP used WoW to demonstrate how easy MMOs have become in the past 15 years. What he failed to mention in his article is that many of the "quality of life" changes that have been added to WoW were created by the players first, by way of add-ons. These are changes that the players themselves wanted. All Blizzard did was listen.
The vast majority of current players of MMORPGs seems to prefer "ease of use" over "grind 'til you're blind". ::shrug:: Go figure.
Yes, too simple. People gripe about having to grind mobs back in the days of EQ and UO, but within that process they also got to know people, made new friends and actually enjoyed the process. It was NOT really a grind, it was a journey through a game. I miss the shouts asking for more players in a specific dungeon. It made the games feel alive.
I will say that most the crafting has been dumbed down. I play games like ATITD and Planet Calypso and their systems are by NO means dumbed down. It takes a long time to get anywhere and I truly wish the big developers would do better at the crafting/harvesting sides of the games. I do appreciate some of the shortcuts, but I sincerely believe they have added way too many. I used to play for months up to as long as years...but now, I am lucky to stay a month or two before I try the next game.
How about a 1965 Corvette? Would you rather drive that or a spanking new 2013 Prius?
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
I really stoped playing MMO's for that reason, the games are hollow and only the end game matters, and the end game is repetitive and without pourpose.
Who wants to kill the same thing in the same place 100's of times in a row? Thats non sense.
Even though EVE isnt everyones cup of tea, the industry should try to learn from what it makes right.
Theres no end game in EVE, EVE is all about the journey. There are levels, but they really dont matter that much as most specializations trains very fast.
The noob and the "pro" are equally important to the life of the guilds there, and players craft their own histories, theres pratically no quests - repetitove and meaningless content - only the activities a group does and its interactions with the other groups there.
And thats what I expect from game nowadays. I want that the steel sword I got in the begining is near as effective as the steel sword I get 1 years forth. Steel is steel and it cuts the same.
What should matter is the player interactions with the environment and betwen themselves. Not a string of quests.
Its really sad that most games invest so much in graphical assets like entire detailed zones that are only used at the start of a game and are never visited again, because the player level outclassed it.
Great Article, one of the Firefall Beta testers has written an excellent description about the problem that absolutely EVERY developer should read anf think about it while designing games
REPOST FROM THE FIREFALL FORUMS:
OK.
Scaling.
There are some things that require scaling, but there are other things that scaling can absolute destroy a game.
If you remove the " bad scaling", you dont even have to aknowledge the concept of power creep. Because its like preventing cancer.
If we are to limit the idea of Scaling to Progression, then we have to aknowledge the different character progression systems and the different types of progression.
Progression systems:
skill based
level based
tier based
Skill based is the term we used to give to Ultima Online, Dark Fall, Link Realms... You Progress by repetition of a skill. A full featured activity is called a skill. A skill back then did not meant an ability or a spell. So every different type of activity, such as fishing or blacksmithing was a skill. It was synonymous to proficiency or job.
Then we got the influence from Dungeons and Dragons Progression system, and then the level based systems came. You see, in the realm of ideas and methods of quantifying numerically progression, the level based one was always one of the poorest and less thought out.
We had GURPS, we have World of Darkness and whole other Progression systems from pen and paper RPGs that were much better for dozens of reasons.
The problem was that level based system provided a single number to rule them all. Your level. And this is another area where people started cutting corners. Lets go with level based system, its simpler, it was more convenient. It was an abstraction of Progression.
It is on level based systems that the cancer of scaling started.
They cut corners on scaling too. So you had a single number, the level and then you applied a paralel number or a variable and you managed to get Scaling.
At this point you have to think where the need for Scale actually comes from. What justifies it? Why does it have to have Scaling?
Now, if step out of the level based conceptual prison back into the skill based, or GURPS or World of Darkness or other pen and paper roleplaying game that did not made use of the level measure, you will find out the answer!
It wasnt the same thing we call Scaling today.
Have you heard of Progress Quest? It is an automated program that is a mockery of Scaling. Some people who dont know better say its a mockery of grind. You are level 1, you kill level 1 enemies with level 1 weapons to get level 1 loot... You repeat it a few times and then you become level 2 and then you fighting level 2 enemies with level 2 weapons to get level 2 loot... You get the idea.
The problem with Scaling, is that it ruins the imunologic system of the game, like an antibiotic.
People face a challenge they cant defeat, they complain and cry about it. So the developer goes and fixes. Over time on this cycle of people crying and developers fixing, we got a very "evolved scalling system". Wich is a devolution for the game industry nonetheless. Its similar to a mother dumping antibiotics on its child and washing its hands.
The alternative to all that is not take the antibiotic. You cant defeat the Orcs, then dont go on their territory until you can.
Now what the developers did? They prevented people from going to the Orcs territory. So they made a system that was fool-proof. You need level 15 to go to the Orcs territory. So those crying childs that were level 5 and died at the Orcs territory stopped complaining because they could not go there anymore. That was the "antidote" for the problem. That was the misuse of Scaling. To make fool-proof designs. Scripted experiences. Strictly defined difficulty curves and experiences.
This is also part of the pizza of how Freedom died and how we became hostage to "the need for Balance". There were other main elements, but this too.
Now, Scaling originally was something entirelly different. It was based on common sense, critic sense. Reward Ratios, Difficulty Ratios, Time and Effort Ratios, Efficiency Ratios. Everything was well thought out and hand placed on the world. Some people might come and say that there was no Scaling. No. It was different.
So people knew they would find Dragons on Caves and top of Volcanoes and rarelly would meet them in their path from one town to another. Now, Dragons are known to be deadly enemies. People knew they were NOT supposed to take on Dragons. Due to the fact that if you pay artists and special effects guys and sound guys and animators and a bunch of abilities for Dragons, you cant have the Dragons not be played. Otherwise you are wasting your money and resources developping Dragons, right? This is a big problem. Because then developers started to make sure every single little thing they spent their times working on had to be experienced by everyone! But what about Dragons being difficult and so on? That went out of the window. The need to make use of content, generated a problem. We call it nowadays Entitlement.
Since everything became designed to be experienced. Everyone started to expect to experience everything. This included winning, of course! Now, this Entitlement problem, screwed Difficulty/Challenge. I could go on and on about cultural shifts, public education and vaccines and whatnot. But I will just keep on game design. So over time, people started to be handled like idiots and many of them are not idiots. Fool-proof design for the minimum common denominator, everyone entitled to win, be a hero, experience all content, and have no difficulty, become no different, achieve nothing really meaningful...
Now, can you puzzle all the pieces to understand how Scaling fits in? Now, tell me.
Do you think Firefall Progression system really needs Scaling?
Of what? When? Why? How? Have you thought of consequences of Scaling things?
The only scalling we need, derives from common sense. If something is hard, then it is hard. If its hard, then it must be rewarding. If it takes time and effort, then it must be rewarding.
How about multiple players, consortium of agents, a bunch of people working together. Should we scale things to the number of players? Should we limit the number of players? Both of those are bullshit.
The need to scale difficulty to number of players. The need to scale down rewards by number of players. Also bullshit.
There are only a few relations of scaling that makes sense and are necessary. Time and Effort generating progression, check. Difficulty stuff becoming mitigated by more people, check. Difficulty being mitigated by progression generated by time and effort, check.
See, another bullshit, is the idea that difficulty has to keep up magically with the player. This was never a true need in design. There were Dragons, there were noobs, and there were powerfull warriors and mages characters that could kill those Dragons, maybe. And there were Demigods that players character could never kill. There was no bullshit Dragons for noob characters to kill.
The idea that the developer can assert the income rate of player characters through some level scaling. Rewards scaled with difficulty, with rarity and that was it. There was no direct scaling between progression and rewards. No bullshit level 1 player earning level 1 gold, and level 10 player earning level 10 gold.
The content is there, its reward is X, whoever can tackles said content, earns that x reward. The reward is independent of the player character progression.
So basically the design that works is this: you define difficulty, then you define rarity, then you define rewards. Then people of whatever levels and in whatever numbers come and go for it. Thats how it was originally.
Then these "evolutions" came and arbitrariely/artificially started make not only fool-proof designs, but smart-proof designs. We all became restricted to a linear experience, a linear difficulty, a linear progression, a linear income. Everyone on the same boat. Clones. Like criminals in a prison. No Freedom.
There was a time when I played games. Now I game games.
There was nothing wrong with the Dragons on the mountains with their piles of gold and treasure.
All you have to do is make a Progression system that makes sense. Like, from Tier 1 to Tier 5, you can get up to X power. And thats it. And then design enemies for different numbers of players at different tiers, place them arbitrarily as content where they make sense, in the frequency they make sense, with the reward that makes sense.
Then people roam free and do their thing. Kill colorfull fluffy things on the starting areas, or go be hunted in Mordor. You see, a minimalistic scaling.
Everything else creates a layer a problems that cannot be dealt with.
All you have to do to get it right, is know the full range of capabilities given to players so that when you decide something is difficult, it is actually difficult for the top tier of the players and then you appropriatelly place it where it makes sense and attribute a reward that makes sense for it. Do it for everything. Once the dynamic events, spawns, seeds, etc are all set in motion. Let the players common sense do their scaling.
"are you going through the Orcs area, or through the Laracna cave passageway or are you going to take the ferryboat?" Thats it!
We had so many detrimental changes in pretty much every aspect of game design... such as how death is trivial and meaningless and how players are constantly in a bubble from start to finish.
There are ways to address every single one of these issues without resorting to creating more problems. But people need to start aknowledging some harsh truths. They need to evolve their maturity. Our design "evolution" actually caused the opposite effect and people cant handle the linearity/scaling/handholding/panoptic prison design. Many of the reasons for systematic failures come from these.
People feel it, but they just dont know how to express it or evidence what causes it.
They are all now way to easy! …and boring...
The only way we are going to save the genre is to stop and look at what when wrong and start to make fixes.
We have to get away from quest hubs and make people go into the community and interact with the locals. Don’t instantly record my encounter in a log but instead make me write down what I gathered from those conversations along with all of my erroneous assumptions.
We need surprise and awe. If I go out and start farming goats for experience or skill I would hope that somewhere down the road I get hold of a uber goat who turns around and kicks my arse. This would make me pay attention to what I am doing.
The list goes on and on but basically we need to go in another direction. We should consider horizontal progression systems verses the current vertical ones. We need to let players decide what they are and not some pre-defined class. If I want to be a cloth wearing tank that uses a spoon as a weapon, I should have that option.
Basically, the current cookie cutter MMO is failing and we need to do something to resurrect the genre.
Nanulak
great post, I agree to 100%
The perfect thread for chest-thumping. GG mmorpg.
Exactly this. Less brains, more grind.
Lol what ? There is 0 mmorpgs that are eligible for esports.
Time sinks are challenge. They're individual player challenge. I don't care how good you are at a game, there is no amount of skill you can develop that overcomes the screaming wife or neglected baby (or neglected wife and screaming baby, take your pick). I remember way back when in EverQuest, the people who got their significant others to play, got to play more AND advanced faster than the folks who had to deal with "wife aggro". Also, time sinks, as you call them, can be a consequence of challenge. Again, hearkening back to EQ, breaking into the Plane of Fear. It was challenging (at least at one time) and the consequence of failure was possible personal ruin (all your gear, stuck in the plane on a corpse that you can't get). Death penalties are time sinks? Sure, maybe for those people who died a lot. But for those people who only died in the best possible situation (on raids), there was no time sink. Rez up and keep plowing.
Mark, the tools you describe seem to require inordinate amounts of those oh so rare commodities: time and budget. Your game isn't not meant for a wide audience so using it as some point of comparison is flawed. When you were making WoW, you said in your previous article that you were shooting for a wide audience. A game that operates the way you suggest will not be widely accessible for that very reason. The wide audience knows WoW's way of doing things and, by and large, they're not open to changing. As successful as Guild Wars 2 is, I'm almost positive that Mike Morhaime is not stockpiling Tums because GW2 is scaring him. GW2 is widely successful among the gamer set but Joe Casual probably has no idea it even exists (or he's poo-pooing it because it doesn't have Blizzard's name on it).
One reason people were so disappointed in The Old Republic is because Bioware had the time and budget (or the budget to make up for time) to really be innovative and they spent their money in an area whose novelty wears off quickly. "Wow, this is immersive" *spacebar spacebar spacebar* Heck, A Tale in the Desert has some innovative systems (especially at its core) but how many people have even heard of it? The same can be said for Horizo...err, Istaria. If a tree falls in the forest....yes it makes a sound but no one hears it.
I like your ideas but I think you'd need a budget the size of the Pentagon's to pull it off on the scale necessary to revolutionize and revitalize the genre.