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3 Ways MMORPG's Have Gotten Too Easy (And 3 Ways They've Gotten Harder) | MMORPG.com
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3 Ways MMORPG's Have Gotten Too Easy (And 3 Ways They've Gotten Harder) | MMORPG.com
Over the years MMORPG's have changed for many different reasons. Some changed to make the genre more accessible to new players, and some changed so gamers require a substantial time investment to make any beneficial progress. As developers embark on their own quests to find the formula that works for them, here is a list of features that many games have implemented over the past two decades that have either made MMO's a little too easy, or unnecessarily difficult.
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I want a mmorpg where people have gone through misery, have gone through school stuff and actually have had sex even. -sagil
"Failing"? SWToR 10 yr anniversary coming, game has people running all over, DCUO 10 yr anniversary subs up and adding dev staff. WoW and ESO seem to be doing pretty well. I guess I'm confused at how you define "failing"?
You claim that endgame progression is too hard, but it isn't really possible for it to be otherwise. At some point, players are going to run out of content. Either you stretch out the last sliver of content to be extremely grindy in the form of an endgame, or else you have the game abruptly end with a maxed out character and nothing remaining to do with any form of progression at all. And as much as I'd prefer the latter, I can see the business reasons why developers are scared to go that route.
I don't see grouping issues as being one of the game being "too easy". Spending half of your time in-game trying to assemble groups may be a form of challenge, but it's not an interesting challenge. It's painful and nearly everyone hates it, and that's why MMORPGs mostly did away with it. The problem is that if you're going to have group content, you have to have a viable way for players to quickly get a reasonable group, and the only MMORPG that I have ever seen solve that problem is Elsword.
Level scaling doesn't intrinsically make games easier. The problem with it is much more subtle. Without level scaling, if something is too hard and players get stuck, players can go pick up a few levels elsewhere, then come back and beat it. With level scaling, the content will merely have scaled up and still be too hard a few levels later, so you're stuck. So developers respond by making sure that nothing can ever be even slightly too hard, and err instead on the side of making nearly everything way too easy, except for that one thing that they goofed and made only slightly too easy.
It has indeed become much easier to solo over its 6 year history but that was a result of the parallel process of buffs and nerfs that trivialized all solo and quest content. Scaling had nothing to do with that.
I really don't get why so many get hung up on what is essentially the smoke and mirrors of mobs with levels. They may have a different level number label and the higher level ones in the higher level zones may have a different skin or use a different trick or two but RPGs and MMORPGS have forever channeled you to fight mobs your own level in a zone appropriate for your level making a level 10 fighting level 10 mobs be pretty well the same thing as a level 50 fighting level 50 mobs. Sheesh, so much angst over a number label.
The real progression happens when you unlock better skills and ESO has that exactly the same way now as it did before scaling. It also has a range of mobs with different tricks up their sleeves and that is still there with the legacy earlier zones from the non-scaled days having easier mobs and smaller groups of them compared to what you see in the original end-game zones and parts of the new DLC zones.
You want tougher fights? Go level in Craglorn or the newer DLC zones. You want to feel god-like against wimpy mobs? Go level in Auridon or any of the other original level 1-18 zones.
I'm actually curious about whether the writer played in pre and post scaling ESO and can't imagine how he would think that ESO's very easy solo and quest game play is a result of that since the buffs (to you) and nerfs (to difficult quest mobs) had already happened by the time the wholesale level scaling was added.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
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ESO is one of the biggest games that bores me to tears. 90% of that games content can be overcome pressing two buttons. Sure it has harder areas, but they make up small portions of the overall game. How can I enjoy 90% of the content when I have zero chance of failure? There is no thrill. There is just wacking a vampire that is about as much threat as a kitten.
But the overland and quest combat, yeah they overcorrected from what was a pretty good difficulty at release. There were a couple of things that did need tweaking down a bit if you did those as your second or 3rd faction back in the Veteran Rank days but they over-nerfed the crap out of the difficulty of everything.
I remember having to redo my build a couple of times once I started veteran rank leveling because I was struggling against some simple overland content. I eventually got it down fine and could keep doing solo content but there were many back then looking to group just to do simple delves in the vet ranks. Soloing public dungeons was dicey,
But that was back in 2014. It's nothing like that today. No one would dream of grouping for delve unless you just want to play with a friend, and all public dungeon bosses can be easily soloed including the main "group boss" that awards a skill point.
The only PvE challenges left are some of the newer 4-man instances, world bosses and some of the public events in the latest DLC zones like dragons and Harrowstorms.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
I see the genre as failing, too. Not enough new/interesting games coming out soon. Both DCUO and SWTOR are always dead whenever I check them out. WoW is really its own thing for better or worse. I couldn't tell you anything about ESO as the combat delay is so stupid it gets uninstalled within an hour or two of me reinstalling.
Umm ok.. gonna just put this out there.
Auto-pathing.
Honestly, I miss things like Auto-follow in EQ1, where I could just target a group mate and have them lead me to the quest, or wherever it was we were supposed to go, as that was the perfect time to get a drink and snack before the grinding started. Modern Games like ESO, GW2, and the like, do not have this feature, and for the life of me, I have no idea why they don't.
Depending on how things would go, sometimes we would buy a ride from a Druid or Wizard, have them port us close to the location, if it was a druid, ask them for a SoW, or use Journeyman Boots, or Bard Drums, DMF, really, just something to make the run go faster, because we wanted to get to the fun, not go prancing around the countryside singing the hills are alive with sound of bloodshed.
Personally, the travel systems in modern games makes sense, like BDO's auto-pathing to any place you know of, or GW2 waypoint system. Mounts and the like are also just fancy means to speed up the travel time, which is really just a time sink when you think about it.
But really, with the breakdown in grouping, auto-pathing just makes sense. I would love Auto-follow so I could follow other players as well, but, again, that seems to have died somewhere in translation.
That sense of community has been killed for the sake of "accessibility", and it's absolute nonsense when people/developers say "you can't have that in today's games because back then the internet was new". Survival games have recaptured some of that sense of community, but it just isn't quite back to where it needs to be yet, and games like Fallout 76 keeps proving that having that community is absolutely necessary if you don't want your game to keep tripping over itself.
"End Game Progression" often has a P2W element, that is where much of the difficulty comes from. True the like of raids and gear progression shows MMOs had this idea from the start but that's one of the reasons it remained difficult, because it can be tied into the cash shop. This though is the one where I agree the most with Steven.
"Handling RGN" is purely about the P2W in a game or the pay to have a cosmetic, it is not about making the game more difficult it is about making you pay more.
"Staying Invested" is not even really talking about difficulty in MMOs, it is talking about other game genres and ideas developers have had to come up with MMO content.
So to balance this item and make it look like he was not just slamming MMOs for a lack of difficulty, two of the three "difficult" areas were just made up. MMOs have got ever easier and we have to face up to that. Having said that this is still one of the most honest appraisals of this issue I have seen from a gaming journalist in ages.
The word you are looking for is "exacerbated."
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Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
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All I remember about ESO was the combat was lackluster and I was running constantly trying to find quest givers.....I dont remember the name of the city but one was like a 3-d maze where you just ran up and down constantly trying to find the person to return to the quest to....It was absolutely zero fun.
I don't think it's that.
Not quite anyway. Because you are right, if you are lvl 10 fighting a lvl 10 it most likely has the same or "similar" difficulty compared to a lvl 50 fighting a lvl 50. Maybe the lvl 50's have more skills or some such thing.
No, I think it's so players can feel that if they went back to old zones that nothing could harm them or that they can AOE an entire field of mobs without breaking a sweat.
I think it's that comparison or experience that they want.
My thought is that I'd prefer a much narrower lvl range so that lower level mobs can still post a danger yet can be devastating to a new character.
I mean, a real life wolf is going to be dangerous to a child and still a danger to an adult 6' male right?
I suppose the more I play these games the more broad I'd like leveling to be. Sort of getting tired of seeing (in lord of the Rings online) a lvl 5 Crebain and a lvl 50 (or whatever) Crebain.
It's a evil bird, crush it and move on.
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To be honest the only reason for hating scaling that makes sense to me is that you can't challenge yourself by taking on mobs that are much higher level than you. It keeps you from seeking out "red con" mobs for a challenge because they no longer exist with level scaling.
But the solution to that is pretty simple and ESO just like most other MMOs already do it: you have a variety of mob difficulty independent of level. In ESO even though all mobs have the same level, fighting a giant or a mammoth for example is tougher than fighting a skeever. There's also a range for mobs of the same type. Bandits come in normal, strong, mini-boss and boss each with increasing difficulty.
Whether it's done through full scaling, partial scaling, level squishes or whatever, I think what we all want is variety of challenge and a feeling of progression but levels are not needed to give you that. Nor does your feeling of progression need to be so obvious as struggling to kill 1 zombie at level 5 to being able to kill 10 of them in one shot at level 50. I do want that zombie to feel like an easier fight when I'm 50 but I still should need to work at it a bit.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED