We are not seeing difficulty sliders in clean sheet MMOs either. GW2, TESO and Wildstar - none of them have difficulty sliders like Diablo III.
Why? It's because they do market research and discover most people will just go with easy mode for most of the content - robbing themselves of any satisfaction they would get from achieving anything in the game. You might think that this is impossible and that people will just pick the level that's most fun - but real world experience shows us this is not.
If this is true then why do most single player games have difficulty levels? Games are not work. It's not about getting it done as fast and efficient as possible (at least for most people). Challenge is fun. I don't believe most people play games on the easiest possible mode.
I think it's devs that are the lazy ones. Making multiple difficulty levels in MMOs = more work so why not just dumb it down for everyone?
What happen to mmo's now? I remember when a mmo where a challenge. One play style, players adapting to the content, true team play, real player communities, Countless hours of dying and few players ever reaching really top level/gear because of hard work. But now, reaching top level can be done in a weekend, content is adjusted for the player so they can get through it, everything can be solo'ed in a weekend.
What makes anyone think the next two big mmo's coming out will be anything different? I mean, it more of the same. Will there be anything different? I mean really. The last 2 AAA mmo's I played, reaching top level was easy, I rarely died, leveling was a joke, getting high-end gear was not that difficult. I did most of that with a month's time. After, 3 months, I had no interest in continuing to play. Does anyone really thing the AAA games Wildstar online or Elder scrolls online will last that long?
I've played some of the best AAA mmo's out there, daoc, wow, rift, gw2, ac and with each new mmo the games gets easier. I'm here to bash but I can't see next two mmos as something that will change anything. Does anyone really seeing themselves play ESO or Wildstar for 6 months or longer?
Maybe it not just mmo's but video games in general. I watched this youtube post by Review Tech USA some up everything I felt.
This is something that several Developers have noticed over the last decade. Many players have left in droves from World of Warcraft and other games to go on the quest to find a game that is "different". The challenge has been tossed to the side for the easy gain. Players have let the developers get lazy on content and accepted the daily quests as an excuse to not create in depth content.
Then you have one of the oldest PC game developers in the industry making a comeback: Chris Roberts. This man is a legend in the gaming industry starting with Wing Commander and following it up with Freelancer. Now Mr. Roberts is creating the next gen Space Sim MMO and he is doing it with flair. As of writing this post the company behind the next gen MMOSim has achieved almost 41 million dollars in player based crowd funding to develop this epic game: Star Citizen
Now on the MMORPG front there was an Author who was unsatisfied with the current model of MMORPG's.. Hence Phillip Blood took it upon himself with the help of many programmers to start on a next gen MMORPG that breaks the Tolkien Fantasy mold and create an open concept world for players to explore that encompasses 300 million Km of land and sea. This game didnt do well in kickstarter due to several reasons including players not understanding what "pre-alpha" means as well as competing with the aforementioned Star Citizen. Citadel of Sorcery will have everything that the current MMORPGs lack as well as many new things for us MMORPG fans have been waiting for.
So the future isnt so bleak anymore... Neverquest Next, Elderscrolls online, and Wildstar are just a mix of what we all hate about the past MMORPGs. So set your expectations at a balanced level, try not to be too disappointed and wait a few more years for the future next gen games. It will be worth the wait!
I would have to agree with the general feeling that MMO's are becoming too easy.. They have become that everyone is a hero and can solo the game.. I'm not sure where this all started.. Back in the day, even vanilla WoW, there were certain areas and mobs that were in the open world that you just didn't take on solo.. (PERIOD).. Now I will have to say I'm not a fan of required grouping to get credit for these mobs, because they were exclusive where only the killing group got credit and others got screwed.. I'm a firm believer that games should follow the "soft" group mechanic where anyone that actually participate in the fight gets credit to a certain degree like how GW2 does it..
That being said, when someone yells "Sand Giant to the docks". everyone can actually get excited to join in.. I will have to say that GW2 does a good job in this regard, but sadly there are too many other issues that need addressed.. Since playing MMO's from 1999 to current, original EQ is still the best experience, if only they would of tweaked the game where it was flawed using what other devs did like ArenaNet and Blizzard.. But oh well.. That is just me and my preference.. Currently I;m spending most of my time playing World of Tanks now..
But you don't know that they would be different. That is what I was trying to tell you earlier. They could be exactly the same for all we knew.
Say you designed a game with medium difficulty: What is to stop you from simply adding easy and hard difficulties? Medium difficulty remains the same, but hard and easy difficulties might very well be the same settings they would've been implemented if the game had only easy or hard difficulty. There's no way to be sure.
Also, like narius said, nobody is customizing a game for just one person, so there is little point in talking about "ideal solutions".
You're asking me to prove a negative. There are many games that obviously DON'T change all aspects of the difficulty of a game. It's your job to show a game that does.
And what is stopping you from making easy and hard difficulties is the time and resources restraint. Fact is, it's much easier and cheaper to simply change modifiers and stats for the "elite" people that want to beat it on the super mega hard difficulty. Why do you think people LOVE the dark souls games? Because they're not just hard in a fake way. It's not just that you don't have much health, or that everything hits really hard. The difficulty is IN the design of the game. Difficulty sliders don't change that. For the most part they just change stats and maybe how many enemies spawn. I'm sure there are a few that change SOME design elements, but none of them is ever going to change so much that it would end up exactly as it would if it were designed from the ground up for that level of difficulty. This is so incredibly obvious. Sometimes I swear you guys argue just to argue.
Narius' (and now your) point about games being made for more than one person is utterly meaningless. All games are going after a specific target audience. The games with Easy, Medium and Hard difficulty settings aren't going after THREE people, are they? No. So obviously a game with only one difficulty setting wouldn't be going after just ONE person. I really feel like I shouldn't have to explain stuff like that.
I'm not asking you to prove anything. I've already told you that a difficulty slider likely doesn't change all aspects of the game. And I've already told you that difficulty sliders can be programmed to change pretty much anything. Not just stats. Just because adjusting stats is easy is feeble basis for an argument that all or most difficulty sliders only adjust stats. It is also unfair to judge all difficulty sliders based on one of the worst implementations of them.
The point of bringing up the fact that no game is customized for just one person, is to show you that all games are targeted for a target audience - a group of people. Difficulty will be unavoidably suboptimal by your impossible standards, so what is the point of me coming up with an example where difficulty sliders change everything. What would be the point? What would that prove or disprove?
You have no coherent argument as far as I'm concerned. You need to rethink what you're saying and why you are saying it.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
Until we have either A) someone with tons of money willing to throw it into making an MMO for the sheer love of MMOs and not giving a single shit about making any profit off of it or the ability to make high quality MMOs loaded with features and massive worlds EXTREMELY cheap, this trend is not going to change. It's become all about the $. You may have some indie devs around who don't care about the profit and genuinely love what theyre doing, but they need money to make the game, and the only way to get financial backing is for the game to be setup to profit.
Making games easier and more appealing the masses, as well as giving everyone "Participant" trophies, is unfortunately the best way to bring in lots of players for fast & easy profit, which makes the investors happy.
Unfortunately nobody wants to work for things anymore. There is no more pride in actually earning your rewards. It comes down to "someone else has it, i should be able to have it to just because i want it". Just look at some of the crap going on in our society now... like the fast food workers trying to double their pay, mainly being led by a woman who admits to only working at McDonalds something like 15 hours a week while complaining she cant support a family on her pay. I mean, she couldnt possibly you know work hard and find a better job, maybe get an education, etc. It's automatically "Hey someone else who probably has years of experience and a college degree doing a job that cant be performed by a monkey makes that much, I should get paid that much too for doing unskilled work".
MMO's have become pretty much like that. There is no "Hey that small group of people were the only ones good enough & smart enough and dedicated enough to take down this epic boss and have the rewards to show off." It's become "I don't want to put the effort in that those guys did. Just give it to me or I'm going to cry about it long and loud enough that you cant ignore me anymore"
Hopefully we get B before A so that a variety of such games come to exist over the yearsrather than just that 1 game that 1 rich guy made and didnt care about profiting from.
We are not seeing difficulty sliders in clean sheet MMOs either. GW2, TESO and Wildstar - none of them have difficulty sliders like Diablo III.
Why? It's because they do market research and discover most people will just go with easy mode for most of the content - robbing themselves of any satisfaction they would get from achieving anything in the game. You might think that this is impossible and that people will just pick the level that's most fun - but real world experience shows us this is not.
There's a dangerous notion in this comment that it is acceptable to impose one's idea of fun on someone else. For instance, if I were a dev, it would be OK if I removed easy-setting saying you'll enjoy the game more without it. What gives anyone that right to decide what's best for you? And how do you judge whether a decision is good?
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
We are not seeing difficulty sliders in clean sheet MMOs either. GW2, TESO and Wildstar - none of them have difficulty sliders like Diablo III.
Why? It's because they do market research and discover most people will just go with easy mode for most of the content - robbing themselves of any satisfaction they would get from achieving anything in the game. You might think that this is impossible and that people will just pick the level that's most fun - but real world experience shows us this is not.
There's a dangerous notion in this comment that it is acceptable to impose one's idea of fun on someone else. For instance, if I were a dev, it would be OK if I removed easy-setting saying you'll enjoy the game more without it. What gives anyone that right to decide what's best for you? And how do you judge whether a decision is good?
Mario, Donkey Kong, etc - many of the most popular games didn't have an easy mode. The developer gets to make the game how they want. Its not dangerous - if you don't like it - don't play it.
Sliders are popular in some single player RPGs. SOME. But its hardly necessary that they are in every game. In general people are more alike then you think. There is a 'bell curve' of average gaming abilities - you aim such that your game can be completed by most gamers. Some might have to play a little more - but its never been the end of the world. It can actually be fun.
I am not a great platformer but I didn't complete Mario and a ton of other games. A slider is a design decision. Its a better decision for single player as I explained.
We are not seeing difficulty sliders in clean sheet MMOs either. GW2, TESO and Wildstar - none of them have difficulty sliders like Diablo III.
Why? It's because they do market research and discover most people will just go with easy mode for most of the content - robbing themselves of any satisfaction they would get from achieving anything in the game. You might think that this is impossible and that people will just pick the level that's most fun - but real world experience shows us this is not.
If this is true then why do most single player games have difficulty levels? Games are not work. It's not about getting it done as fast and efficient as possible (at least for most people). Challenge is fun. I don't believe most people play games on the easiest possible mode.
I'd agree with you on single player games. But this is not the case for MMOs. Why? MMOs are competitive by nature. Players are driven to acquire gear in the fastest most efficient way possible as this is how their character is advanced. As such they seek out any means to do so.
Again this is a well established fact in both MMOs and MUDs and the reason why MMOS don't have sliders. The closest they have was WoW failed attempt at a baby raiding mode..with LFR.
Its very different with a single player game. I am just playing at my own pace - and most of the time I just want to complete the game. So sure sliders work in that scenario - but they don't work in MMOs - and that of course is why they don't have them.
I don't know why people in this forum think developers are idiots. They are not. Everything you have thought of - they have thought of and tested for the most part.
I think it's devs that are the lazy ones. Making multiple difficulty levels in MMOs = more work so why not just dumb it down for everyone?
Dumbing it down for everyone will come from making multiple difficulties because people will choose the easy mode as long as they get comparative loot. Again developers aren't lazy..
They find the difficulty setting that's easiest enough to not scare bad players away but not so easy that good ones quit. Then they put hard content at the END of their game to help keep the better players interested. It's a method that works. Sliders OTOH don't work in MMOs as even "good' players would feel 'stupid' if they didn't make the content as easy as possible.
Imagine your guild is trying to get a raid boss down - but the lead tank has his slider on 'hard'. How do you think that would go over? LMAO. You know damn well everyone would demand he put it on the easiest setting - heck in WoW they would make some add on to check that.. Jack is on 'hard' kick him!
If you honestly deny that scenario I don't believe you have ever done progressive raiding. I am sorry.
I'm from the UO age where when you died to pretty much lost all your items. Looted by monsters, real players, bandits. I also came from FFXI where if you didn't set your homepoint, you were thrown across the world AND lost some of your exp.
Now, I'm not saying games need to be this hard anymore and I know there were harder out there. WoW was released as an easier game and I can understand why. What I don't understand is why you would make an easy game easier. And why other companies like Carbine, as much as I love Wildstar, had to follow in this path of making everything super casual.
I'm not some hardcore elitist. I just want an MMORPG has a system where the risk matches the reward. This is simply not seen anymore.
I'm from the UO age where when you died to pretty much lost all your items. Looted by monsters, real players, bandits. I also came from FFXI where if you didn't set your homepoint, you were thrown across the world AND lost some of your exp.
Old school games were hard at the beginning - this proved to be a bad model. Those games were not popular.
Now, I'm not saying games need to be this hard anymore and I know there were harder out there. WoW was released as an easier game and I can understand why. What I don't understand is why you would make an easy game easier. And why other companies like Carbine, as much as I love Wildstar, had to follow in this path of making everything super casual.
let's be honest - you understand. You just don't like it. Games are easy at the start because developers found people would quit if it was too difficult before they 'got into it.'
I'm not some hardcore elitist. I just want an MMORPG has a system where the risk matches the reward. This is simply not seen anymore.
Really? Have you not heard of raids or fractals in GW2? The harder the content the better gear you get. Honestly EQ was EASY at the end. Once you had friends and good gear it was a matter of grinding. It was hard in the beginning. This might have been fun for some people but its a stupid way to design a game if you want to maximize profit.
Originally posted by jesteralways . unless we can create a virtual reality mmorpg where players can truly live, those "glory" days are never coming back.
Even if you can create a virtual reality mmorpg where players can truly live, i doubt those days will come back. It is about players preferences, not technology.
That is why the newer mmo's don't last more that 6 months
They don't last or you get bored ?
I'd be interested in seeing data on player retention actually. I bet people quit modern themepark MMO's more quickly on average than the "oldschool" and sandbox ones.
All the "oldschool" and "sandbox" games of the past had almost no competition when they where at their peak. Their player base all dwindled over time when newer game released. Look at EvE, its playerbase is stable, but it has no competition. There are no other ship-based, scifi-oriented sandbox on the market (until Star Citizen and Elite are released).
We are not seeing difficulty sliders in clean sheet MMOs either. GW2, TESO and Wildstar - none of them have difficulty sliders like Diablo III.
Why? It's because they do market research and discover most people will just go with easy mode for most of the content - robbing themselves of any satisfaction they would get from achieving anything in the game. You might think that this is impossible and that people will just pick the level that's most fun - but real world experience shows us this is not.
There's a dangerous notion in this comment that it is acceptable to impose one's idea of fun on someone else. For instance, if I were a dev, it would be OK if I removed easy-setting saying you'll enjoy the game more without it. What gives anyone that right to decide what's best for you? And how do you judge whether a decision is good?
Well, I would hope a developer is making such decisions with the best interest of their players and the overall game itself in mind. For instance, if they believe a difficulty slider would always be set to "easy" for nearly all players, then there's not much point in having the difficulty slider in the game. If players have the option of "easy", but can only really progress in the game past a certain point by having the slider set to "hard" because of loot drop effects, then again, there's not much point in having the difficulty slider in the game. Even if the difficulty slider being set to "hard" was a player requirement for raiding guilds rather than one set by the game to make sure a guild's progression proceeded at an acceptable pace, it becomes a meaningless choice. Developers aren't deciding what the definition of fun is for players, they are trying to ferret out what players will find to be fun, and then provide it.
How we judge a decision to be good would be very different from how a developer does it. Apparently we do it by seeing whether or not we as individuals like the decision, and then we generalize that to the entire population of gamers, regardless of the game being played. A developer probably does it by looking at the metrics of what most people are doing in their games. For instance, they could see whether or not people are using a difficulty slider, and what difficulty people are setting the game to. They would look at how much people are driven by getting loot in their game versus how much they are driven or put off by the difficulty of the content. And probably many more things besides.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Originally posted by jesteralways . unless we can create a virtual reality mmorpg where players can truly live, those "glory" days are never coming back.
Even if you can create a virtual reality mmorpg where players can truly live, i doubt those days will come back. It is about players preferences, not technology.
That is why the newer mmo's don't last more that 6 months
They don't last or you get bored ?
I got bored with SWToR after a couple months. Years later, it's still running just fine.
Now Earthrise, the sci-fi, sandbox shooter died after a few months. Dominus, the three faction sandbox PvP game never even made it to release.
In my statements, I've assumed that "newer" means "easy as pie theme park" games. If I'm wrong, my apologies. But really, it seems like with new releases, the "easy as pie theme park" games are doing much better than the alternatives.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
But you don't know that they would be different. That is what I was trying to tell you earlier. They could be exactly the same for all we knew.
Say you designed a game with medium difficulty: What is to stop you from simply adding easy and hard difficulties? Medium difficulty remains the same, but hard and easy difficulties might very well be the same settings they would've been implemented if the game had only easy or hard difficulty. There's no way to be sure.
Also, like narius said, nobody is customizing a game for just one person, so there is little point in talking about "ideal solutions".
You're asking me to prove a negative. There are many games that obviously DON'T change all aspects of the difficulty of a game. It's your job to show a game that does.
And what is stopping you from making easy and hard difficulties is the time and resources restraint. Fact is, it's much easier and cheaper to simply change modifiers and stats for the "elite" people that want to beat it on the super mega hard difficulty. Why do you think people LOVE the dark souls games? Because they're not just hard in a fake way. It's not just that you don't have much health, or that everything hits really hard. The difficulty is IN the design of the game. Difficulty sliders don't change that. For the most part they just change stats and maybe how many enemies spawn. I'm sure there are a few that change SOME design elements, but none of them is ever going to change so much that it would end up exactly as it would if it were designed from the ground up for that level of difficulty. This is so incredibly obvious. Sometimes I swear you guys argue just to argue.
Narius' (and now your) point about games being made for more than one person is utterly meaningless. All games are going after a specific target audience. The games with Easy, Medium and Hard difficulty settings aren't going after THREE people, are they? No. So obviously a game with only one difficulty setting wouldn't be going after just ONE person. I really feel like I shouldn't have to explain stuff like that.
I'm not asking you to prove anything. I've already told you that a difficulty slider likely doesn't change all aspects of the game. And I've already told you that difficulty sliders can be programmed to change pretty much anything. Not just stats. Just because adjusting stats is easy is feeble basis for an argument that all or most difficulty sliders only adjust stats. It is also unfair to judge all difficulty sliders based on one of the worst implementations of them.
The point of bringing up the fact that no game is customized for just one person, is to show you that all games are targeted for a target audience - a group of people. Difficulty will be unavoidably suboptimal by your impossible standards, so what is the point of me coming up with an example where difficulty sliders change everything. What would be the point? What would that prove or disprove?
You have no coherent argument as far as I'm concerned. You need to rethink what you're saying and why you are saying it.
Do you understand what this argument is about? Because you don't seem to. Narius said (and has said many times in the past) that difficulty sliders are a perfect way to get everybody what they want. That way people who want difficult games can have them, and people who want easy games can have them. He uses the word "perfect."
The problem is they're NOT perfect. In order for them to be perfect, they would have to give you a game that is the same as it would be if it were designed for that difficulty. If they don't, then it's not a perfect solution. It's not perfect because not everybody is getting what they want. We're getting games that are of lesser quality than if they were designed for that difficulty. Why are they of lesser quality? Because for the millionth time, they don't change all aspects of the game that WOULD BE changed, if the game were made for that difficulty. How can you claim that's not a coherent argument, while at the same time providing absolutely NO rebuttal for it?
And what on earth are you talking about with this "impossible standards" BS? What are my standards exactly? All I'm talking about is why difficulty sliders are not perfect. All I'm doing is explaining why games will be worse because of them. I never said I need a game to be perfect. I NEVER said that a game has to be designed for one specific person. Again... what in the hell are you even talking about?
The point of you coming up with a difficulty slider example where everything was changed would be evidence for why difficulty sliders are perfect; why I would have no reason to dislike them. And by the way, even if you found ONE difficulty slider in a game that was perfect, that very well may be because that game is simple enough for it to be the case, but what about all of the more complicated games? Do you see the problem with Narius saying that difficulty sliders are the perfect solution to this problem of "are games becoming too easy"?? Difficulty sliders work better for simpler games, and worse for more complicated ones. They are not some perfect solution to make everybody happy. The whole thing reminds me of the argument for separate pvp/pve servers. To some people you would think that should make everybody happy, right? WRONG. The game needs to be designed around having pvp in or not having pvp in, in order to make some people happy.
We are not seeing difficulty sliders in clean sheet MMOs either. GW2, TESO and Wildstar - none of them have difficulty sliders like Diablo III.
Why? It's because they do market research and discover most people will just go with easy mode for most of the content - robbing themselves of any satisfaction they would get from achieving anything in the game. You might think that this is impossible and that people will just pick the level that's most fun - but real world experience shows us this is not.
There's a dangerous notion in this comment that it is acceptable to impose one's idea of fun on someone else. For instance, if I were a dev, it would be OK if I removed easy-setting saying you'll enjoy the game more without it. What gives anyone that right to decide what's best for you? And how do you judge whether a decision is good?
Dude. There is nothing "dangerous" about this post. People impose their idea of fun on people every single time they make a game. No game includes all levels of difficulties, so every single time a game is made, a developer is imposing alllllllll kinds of ideas of what is fun on people.
In a game with difficulty sliders you can't have an open world. Everyone would have to be segregated based on their difficulty level. To me I wouldn't enjoy that I don't think.
Originally posted by Flyte27 In a game with difficulty sliders you can't have an open world. Everyone would have to be segregated based on their difficulty level. To me I wouldn't enjoy that I don't think.
No, there's no segregation required at all. Each individual would face encounters based on their individual difficulty levels. The mobs would act differently based on an individual's settings. Someone with an easy setting might encounter a single mob at or below their level. Someone with a hard setting might encounter 3 mobs well above their level. You could easily do that in an open world.
I know how the topic creator feel, but thats how the marked went.
People don't want to spend time with grind and farm materials anymore, they just want end game and start pvp.
Personaly i enjoy games like Lineage 2 ( Gracia update and before) where pvp can be started anywhere, and for boss fight the whole guild needed to take one down.
Originally posted by Flyte27 In a game with difficulty sliders you can't have an open world. Everyone would have to be segregated based on their difficulty level. To me I wouldn't enjoy that I don't think.
Yes. To me, that is an added advantage .. i don't have to deal with strangers in the open world.
BTW, there is no problem with a difficulty slider inside an instance.
Originally posted by Flyte27 In a game with difficulty sliders you can't have an open world. Everyone would have to be segregated based on their difficulty level. To me I wouldn't enjoy that I don't think.
Yes. To me, that is an added advantage .. i don't have to deal with strangers in the open world.
BTW, there is no problem with a difficulty slider inside an instance.
So you admit that difficulty sliders aren't the "perfect" solution you claim they are? They're not a "everybody wins" type situation. Some people prefer them, others don't.
I don't think that MMO's are easier™ per se. The biggest difference is that they used to encourage grouping, cooperation and time investment, now they allow mostly solo play and cooperation, in many instances, is not allowed.
What happen to mmo's now? I remember when a mmo where a challenge. One play style, players adapting to the content, true team play, real player communities, Countless hours of dying and few players ever reaching really top level/gear because of hard work. But now, reaching top level can be done in a weekend, content is adjusted for the player so they can get through it, everything can be solo'ed in a weekend.
What makes anyone think the next two big mmo's coming out will be anything different? I mean, it more of the same. Will there be anything different? I mean really. The last 2 AAA mmo's I played, reaching top level was easy, I rarely died, leveling was a joke, getting high-end gear was not that difficult. I did most of that with a month's time. After, 3 months, I had no interest in continuing to play. Does anyone really thing the AAA games Wildstar online or Elder scrolls online will last that long?
I've played some of the best AAA mmo's out there, daoc, wow, rift, gw2, ac and with each new mmo the games gets easier. I'm here to bash but I can't see next two mmos as something that will change anything. Does anyone really seeing themselves play ESO or Wildstar for 6 months or longer?
Maybe it not just mmo's but video games in general. I watched this youtube post by Review Tech USA some up everything I felt.
Is that right? Come to FFXIV and try to beat Titan Hardmode or any Coil stage...There are other boss challenges that will kick your ass too if you're game...
Comments
it's familiarity.
If this is true then why do most single player games have difficulty levels? Games are not work. It's not about getting it done as fast and efficient as possible (at least for most people). Challenge is fun. I don't believe most people play games on the easiest possible mode.
I think it's devs that are the lazy ones. Making multiple difficulty levels in MMOs = more work so why not just dumb it down for everyone?
This is something that several Developers have noticed over the last decade. Many players have left in droves from World of Warcraft and other games to go on the quest to find a game that is "different". The challenge has been tossed to the side for the easy gain. Players have let the developers get lazy on content and accepted the daily quests as an excuse to not create in depth content.
Then you have one of the oldest PC game developers in the industry making a comeback: Chris Roberts. This man is a legend in the gaming industry starting with Wing Commander and following it up with Freelancer. Now Mr. Roberts is creating the next gen Space Sim MMO and he is doing it with flair. As of writing this post the company behind the next gen MMOSim has achieved almost 41 million dollars in player based crowd funding to develop this epic game: Star Citizen
Now on the MMORPG front there was an Author who was unsatisfied with the current model of MMORPG's.. Hence Phillip Blood took it upon himself with the help of many programmers to start on a next gen MMORPG that breaks the Tolkien Fantasy mold and create an open concept world for players to explore that encompasses 300 million Km of land and sea. This game didnt do well in kickstarter due to several reasons including players not understanding what "pre-alpha" means as well as competing with the aforementioned Star Citizen. Citadel of Sorcery will have everything that the current MMORPGs lack as well as many new things for us MMORPG fans have been waiting for.
So the future isnt so bleak anymore... Neverquest Next, Elderscrolls online, and Wildstar are just a mix of what we all hate about the past MMORPGs. So set your expectations at a balanced level, try not to be too disappointed and wait a few more years for the future next gen games. It will be worth the wait!
Played: UO, LotR, WoW, SWG, DDO, AoC, EVE, Warhammer, TF2, EQ2, SWTOR, TSW, CSS, KF, L4D, AoW, WoT
Playing: The Secret World until Citadel of Sorcery goes into Alpha testing.
Tired of: Linear quest games, dailies, and dumbed down games
Anticipating:Citadel of Sorcery
I would have to agree with the general feeling that MMO's are becoming too easy.. They have become that everyone is a hero and can solo the game.. I'm not sure where this all started.. Back in the day, even vanilla WoW, there were certain areas and mobs that were in the open world that you just didn't take on solo.. (PERIOD).. Now I will have to say I'm not a fan of required grouping to get credit for these mobs, because they were exclusive where only the killing group got credit and others got screwed.. I'm a firm believer that games should follow the "soft" group mechanic where anyone that actually participate in the fight gets credit to a certain degree like how GW2 does it..
That being said, when someone yells "Sand Giant to the docks". everyone can actually get excited to join in.. I will have to say that GW2 does a good job in this regard, but sadly there are too many other issues that need addressed.. Since playing MMO's from 1999 to current, original EQ is still the best experience, if only they would of tweaked the game where it was flawed using what other devs did like ArenaNet and Blizzard.. But oh well.. That is just me and my preference.. Currently I;m spending most of my time playing World of Tanks now..
I'm not asking you to prove anything. I've already told you that a difficulty slider likely doesn't change all aspects of the game. And I've already told you that difficulty sliders can be programmed to change pretty much anything. Not just stats. Just because adjusting stats is easy is feeble basis for an argument that all or most difficulty sliders only adjust stats. It is also unfair to judge all difficulty sliders based on one of the worst implementations of them.
The point of bringing up the fact that no game is customized for just one person, is to show you that all games are targeted for a target audience - a group of people. Difficulty will be unavoidably suboptimal by your impossible standards, so what is the point of me coming up with an example where difficulty sliders change everything. What would be the point? What would that prove or disprove?
You have no coherent argument as far as I'm concerned. You need to rethink what you're saying and why you are saying it.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Until we have either A) someone with tons of money willing to throw it into making an MMO for the sheer love of MMOs and not giving a single shit about making any profit off of it or
the ability to make high quality MMOs loaded with features and massive worlds EXTREMELY cheap, this trend is not going to change. It's become all about the $. You may have some indie devs around who don't care about the profit and genuinely love what theyre doing, but they need money to make the game, and the only way to get financial backing is for the game to be setup to profit.
Making games easier and more appealing the masses, as well as giving everyone "Participant" trophies, is unfortunately the best way to bring in lots of players for fast & easy profit, which makes the investors happy.
Unfortunately nobody wants to work for things anymore. There is no more pride in actually earning your rewards. It comes down to "someone else has it, i should be able to have it to just because i want it". Just look at some of the crap going on in our society now... like the fast food workers trying to double their pay, mainly being led by a woman who admits to only working at McDonalds something like 15 hours a week while complaining she cant support a family on her pay. I mean, she couldnt possibly you know work hard and find a better job, maybe get an education, etc. It's automatically "Hey someone else who probably has years of experience and a college degree doing a job that cant be performed by a monkey makes that much, I should get paid that much too for doing unskilled work".
MMO's have become pretty much like that. There is no "Hey that small group of people were the only ones good enough & smart enough and dedicated enough to take down this epic boss and have the rewards to show off." It's become "I don't want to put the effort in that those guys did. Just give it to me or I'm going to cry about it long and loud enough that you cant ignore me anymore"
Hopefully we get B before A so that a variety of such games come to exist over the yearsrather than just that 1 game that 1 rich guy made and didnt care about profiting from.
There's a dangerous notion in this comment that it is acceptable to impose one's idea of fun on someone else. For instance, if I were a dev, it would be OK if I removed easy-setting saying you'll enjoy the game more without it. What gives anyone that right to decide what's best for you? And how do you judge whether a decision is good?
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Mario, Donkey Kong, etc - many of the most popular games didn't have an easy mode. The developer gets to make the game how they want. Its not dangerous - if you don't like it - don't play it.
Sliders are popular in some single player RPGs. SOME. But its hardly necessary that they are in every game. In general people are more alike then you think. There is a 'bell curve' of average gaming abilities - you aim such that your game can be completed by most gamers. Some might have to play a little more - but its never been the end of the world. It can actually be fun.
I am not a great platformer but I didn't complete Mario and a ton of other games. A slider is a design decision. Its a better decision for single player as I explained.
I'd agree with you on single player games. But this is not the case for MMOs. Why? MMOs are competitive by nature. Players are driven to acquire gear in the fastest most efficient way possible as this is how their character is advanced. As such they seek out any means to do so.
Again this is a well established fact in both MMOs and MUDs and the reason why MMOS don't have sliders. The closest they have was WoW failed attempt at a baby raiding mode..with LFR.
Its very different with a single player game. I am just playing at my own pace - and most of the time I just want to complete the game. So sure sliders work in that scenario - but they don't work in MMOs - and that of course is why they don't have them.
I don't know why people in this forum think developers are idiots. They are not. Everything you have thought of - they have thought of and tested for the most part.
Dumbing it down for everyone will come from making multiple difficulties because people will choose the easy mode as long as they get comparative loot. Again developers aren't lazy..
They find the difficulty setting that's easiest enough to not scare bad players away but not so easy that good ones quit. Then they put hard content at the END of their game to help keep the better players interested. It's a method that works. Sliders OTOH don't work in MMOs as even "good' players would feel 'stupid' if they didn't make the content as easy as possible.
Imagine your guild is trying to get a raid boss down - but the lead tank has his slider on 'hard'. How do you think that would go over? LMAO. You know damn well everyone would demand he put it on the easiest setting - heck in WoW they would make some add on to check that.. Jack is on 'hard' kick him!
If you honestly deny that scenario I don't believe you have ever done progressive raiding. I am sorry.
I'm from the UO age where when you died to pretty much lost all your items. Looted by monsters, real players, bandits. I also came from FFXI where if you didn't set your homepoint, you were thrown across the world AND lost some of your exp.
Now, I'm not saying games need to be this hard anymore and I know there were harder out there. WoW was released as an easier game and I can understand why. What I don't understand is why you would make an easy game easier. And why other companies like Carbine, as much as I love Wildstar, had to follow in this path of making everything super casual.
I'm not some hardcore elitist. I just want an MMORPG has a system where the risk matches the reward. This is simply not seen anymore.
Old school games were hard at the beginning - this proved to be a bad model. Those games were not popular.
let's be honest - you understand. You just don't like it. Games are easy at the start because developers found people would quit if it was too difficult before they 'got into it.'
Really? Have you not heard of raids or fractals in GW2? The harder the content the better gear you get. Honestly EQ was EASY at the end. Once you had friends and good gear it was a matter of grinding. It was hard in the beginning. This might have been fun for some people but its a stupid way to design a game if you want to maximize profit.
All the "oldschool" and "sandbox" games of the past had almost no competition when they where at their peak. Their player base all dwindled over time when newer game released. Look at EvE, its playerbase is stable, but it has no competition. There are no other ship-based, scifi-oriented sandbox on the market (until Star Citizen and Elite are released).
These day a new MMO is released every few months.
Well, I would hope a developer is making such decisions with the best interest of their players and the overall game itself in mind. For instance, if they believe a difficulty slider would always be set to "easy" for nearly all players, then there's not much point in having the difficulty slider in the game. If players have the option of "easy", but can only really progress in the game past a certain point by having the slider set to "hard" because of loot drop effects, then again, there's not much point in having the difficulty slider in the game. Even if the difficulty slider being set to "hard" was a player requirement for raiding guilds rather than one set by the game to make sure a guild's progression proceeded at an acceptable pace, it becomes a meaningless choice. Developers aren't deciding what the definition of fun is for players, they are trying to ferret out what players will find to be fun, and then provide it.
How we judge a decision to be good would be very different from how a developer does it. Apparently we do it by seeing whether or not we as individuals like the decision, and then we generalize that to the entire population of gamers, regardless of the game being played. A developer probably does it by looking at the metrics of what most people are doing in their games. For instance, they could see whether or not people are using a difficulty slider, and what difficulty people are setting the game to. They would look at how much people are driven by getting loot in their game versus how much they are driven or put off by the difficulty of the content. And probably many more things besides.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I got bored with SWToR after a couple months. Years later, it's still running just fine.
Now Earthrise, the sci-fi, sandbox shooter died after a few months. Dominus, the three faction sandbox PvP game never even made it to release.
In my statements, I've assumed that "newer" means "easy as pie theme park" games. If I'm wrong, my apologies. But really, it seems like with new releases, the "easy as pie theme park" games are doing much better than the alternatives.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Do you understand what this argument is about? Because you don't seem to. Narius said (and has said many times in the past) that difficulty sliders are a perfect way to get everybody what they want. That way people who want difficult games can have them, and people who want easy games can have them. He uses the word "perfect."
The problem is they're NOT perfect. In order for them to be perfect, they would have to give you a game that is the same as it would be if it were designed for that difficulty. If they don't, then it's not a perfect solution. It's not perfect because not everybody is getting what they want. We're getting games that are of lesser quality than if they were designed for that difficulty. Why are they of lesser quality? Because for the millionth time, they don't change all aspects of the game that WOULD BE changed, if the game were made for that difficulty. How can you claim that's not a coherent argument, while at the same time providing absolutely NO rebuttal for it?
And what on earth are you talking about with this "impossible standards" BS? What are my standards exactly? All I'm talking about is why difficulty sliders are not perfect. All I'm doing is explaining why games will be worse because of them. I never said I need a game to be perfect. I NEVER said that a game has to be designed for one specific person. Again... what in the hell are you even talking about?
The point of you coming up with a difficulty slider example where everything was changed would be evidence for why difficulty sliders are perfect; why I would have no reason to dislike them. And by the way, even if you found ONE difficulty slider in a game that was perfect, that very well may be because that game is simple enough for it to be the case, but what about all of the more complicated games? Do you see the problem with Narius saying that difficulty sliders are the perfect solution to this problem of "are games becoming too easy"?? Difficulty sliders work better for simpler games, and worse for more complicated ones. They are not some perfect solution to make everybody happy. The whole thing reminds me of the argument for separate pvp/pve servers. To some people you would think that should make everybody happy, right? WRONG. The game needs to be designed around having pvp in or not having pvp in, in order to make some people happy.
Dude. There is nothing "dangerous" about this post. People impose their idea of fun on people every single time they make a game. No game includes all levels of difficulties, so every single time a game is made, a developer is imposing alllllllll kinds of ideas of what is fun on people.
I think with the star system, open world games can still provide a great challenge.
ex.
Go into a dungeon, kill boss, one star.
Go into a dungeon, avoid all patrolling mobs, loot every chest, solve all the puzzles, and kill the boss like a pro, three stars.
Show leader boards for each dungeon.
-WL
Werewolf Online(R) - Lead Developer
Or just stop waving your dick around and just play the game. There's no need for leader boards. There's no need to show off. Just play the game.
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
Hope: None
No, there's no segregation required at all. Each individual would face encounters based on their individual difficulty levels. The mobs would act differently based on an individual's settings. Someone with an easy setting might encounter a single mob at or below their level. Someone with a hard setting might encounter 3 mobs well above their level. You could easily do that in an open world.
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
Hope: None
I know how the topic creator feel, but thats how the marked went.
People don't want to spend time with grind and farm materials anymore, they just want end game and start pvp.
Personaly i enjoy games like Lineage 2 ( Gracia update and before) where pvp can be started anywhere, and for boss fight the whole guild needed to take one down.
Yes. To me, that is an added advantage .. i don't have to deal with strangers in the open world.
BTW, there is no problem with a difficulty slider inside an instance.
So you admit that difficulty sliders aren't the "perfect" solution you claim they are? They're not a "everybody wins" type situation. Some people prefer them, others don't.
I don't think that MMO's are easier™ per se. The biggest difference is that they used to encourage grouping, cooperation and time investment, now they allow mostly solo play and cooperation, in many instances, is not allowed.
Is that right? Come to FFXIV and try to beat Titan Hardmode or any Coil stage...There are other boss challenges that will kick your ass too if you're game...