I realize that there are many factors in what have made current MMO's easy, but I think I've figured out the BIGGEST reason why they are easy today. With the combination of allowing you to scroll you camera view out 150yards into the air combined with the "Spell Lines" that show up whenever a spell is going to be cast so you know the EXACT spot you have to move out of before the spell is even cast.
What do you guys think?
It's all about Money, easy games opens your game up to more players of all types, ages, skill levels etc, more players = bigger population = bigger profit.
WoW was a prime example, classic WoW was no where as easy as it is today, clasisc didn't have the population it did during it's prime, along came BC and WOTLK expacs, during these xpacs Blizzard took the line of everyone should see all content, they opened up raids to everyone of all skill levels and removed the skill barriers to all content, and hey presto the peeked at 12 Mil subs.
I personally think it is the MOBA generation. The average consumer doesnt want to have to "prepare" for a raid. They do not want to gather a group of people to attempt a raid. They want the quick get in get out in 10 minute type of thing. This is why dungeons in games are designed to be linear and straight forward because people want to get in there and get it done fast for the quickest rewards. When that somewhat longer dungeon pops in a dungeon queue chat is often screaming "Oh no! Anything but this place!" and drop group.
Well this has been causing developers and publishers (mostly publishers I feel) who want to see their profit margins nice and high go "How do we keep people interested in our game?! They don't want challenge they want quick games that they can pick up and put down in 15 minutes! Lets give them that!" Well the issue with that is they have to allow people to queue or make them super accessible which does what? Brings in players who have no idea of how to play nor have a desire to learn. Well this frustrates the more skilled players and they complain about it saying "If I didnt have to queue with randoms then we might be able to finish this activity!"
Developers look at that and go "If we remove the accessiblity we lose the quick get in get out gameplay. So lets lower the difficulty to make up for the fact that players are not finding people to play with of similar skill sets which would make this content easy."
The never ending nerf bat cycle right there...
I don't think modern games are any easier than old games.
Most people who criticize "modern games" as being easy have probably never participated in modern elite tier raiding.
What was this "pinnacle" of difficulty in EQ raiding that people revere so much? Having your healer's role able to be filled by an autohotkey macro? (Pressing your CH key on a predetermined time interval while facing your camera at the ground so you don't lag too hard)
Liav said:I don't think modern games are any easier than old games.
Most people who criticize "modern games" as being easy have probably never participated in modern elite tier raiding.
What was this "pinnacle" of difficulty in EQ raiding that people revere so much? Having your healer's role able to be filled by an autohotkey macro? (Pressing your CH key on a predetermined time interval while facing your camera at the ground so you don't lag too hard)
I have participated in "Modern Elite Tier Raiding" for the last however many years until this day. Just because you are running around more making sure to not be inside of the orange lines does not make it harder. If there were no orange lines and you couldnt watch the entire battle field zoomed out 500ft then yeah id say modern content would be tough as hell.
Taledar said:I have participated in "Modern Elite Tier Raiding" for the last however many years until this day. Just because you are running around more making sure to not be inside of the orange lines does not make it harder. If there were no orange lines and you couldnt watch the entire battle field zoomed out 500ft then yeah id say modern content would be tough as hell.
See, your extremely unrealistic summarization of what modern games are like makes me wonder if you're telling the truth.
Modern raid encounters are fundamentally designed around the wealth of information available now. Guilds still take months to clear new expansion content in some cases. What was difficult about original EQ raiding? Rogues, for instance, literally had two important buttons to press during raids. Mash backstab and your Evade macro. That isn't an exaggeration.
Modern raids are scripted around your ability to scroll your camera out of first person. Telegraphed attacks replaced having an AOE that goes off every 30 seconds on the mark. What's the difference between keeping a timer and having a large orange cone to dodge out of in a timely manner?
Edit: Another fun question. Why is the number of participants in modern progression-tier raiding so small now, compared to having the bar set so low in EQ that anyone with high enough MR can stand around and participate?
EQ's raids were tough if you did not have the majority of the raid group in proper gear and if they did not know proper spacing / positioning for "hidden" mechanics (like flurry). Yes MR was a HUGE stat you had to have just to have a chance, otherwise, your healers would spend valuable mana to keep them up. I also think unmitigated / cured DOT damage and uncontrolled adds were a large reason for failures. Another would be resource management or resource supply during a long fight.
Modern day upper tier raiding is gear related for sure, but a bigger issue is most people are not good at mitigating damage through proper mechanics. This requires one to know exactly how to play their class and exactly what to do when in order to not suck up resources the raid needs to finish the boss. It becomes quite apparent when you run in an elite group of players and you suddenly knock out raid night with ease. That is when my eyes were opened that it comes down to players having clear vision / understanding what to do or expect. You do not see most players being able to do this well...
In closing, why do we need a game that caters to the elites? Games do not have to be ultra hard to be entertaining and challenging. There are more players out their that are average to above average than their are elites. So to me it makes sense to build a game around that instead of pleasing the players that rise to the top in a month. This can be hugely debated I am sure but I truly believe that.
Sometimes I think a big problem is devs are often really good gamers and they tend to develop things overly difficult to achieve. This is great for really good gamers but not so great for the average player that is looking to participate more. Hard thing to balance i'm sure... A good example is I would like my wife to play in games I do but she just can't handle most mechanics. So she is intimidated and sticks to the simple stuff. I have another friend that has the cash, enjoys gaming, but just does not have the skill level to reach end game. I know some really cool people out there that are in the same boat. Well I want a game where we can hang together and still do it all someday. A group of new friends will not all be elitists for sure...
Pyye
Pyye said:In closing, why do we need a game that caters to the elites? Games do not have to be ultra hard to be entertaining and challenging. There are more players out their that are average to above average than their are elites. So to me it makes sense to build a game around that instead of pleasing the players that rise to the top in a month. This can be hugely debated I am sure but I truly believe that.
I don't really think that they do. I'm just addressing the constant regurgitation (not from you, granted) that EQ Classic was the epitome of gaming difficulty and that modern raids are "too easy". It's just misdirected criticism and it frustrates me greatly to see people dismiss modern games outrights for criticisms that aren't even remotely sound.
I'm not accusing you of this, of course, but it seems to be a common thing here. EQ is worshipped by a lot of posters here with an almost deific reverence, and I don't think that's healthy for Pantheon, either. EQ shouldn't be immune to criticism any more than any other game, and other games shouldn't be unfairly criticized. I say this because I think that it's in Pantheon's best interest to be as unbiased is possible when evaluating things.
Pyye said:Sometimes I think a big problem is devs are often really good gamers and they tend to develop things overly difficult to achieve. This is great for really good gamers but not so great for the average player that is looking to participate more. Hard thing to balance i'm sure... A good example is I would like my wife to play in games I do but she just can't handle most mechanics. So she is intimidated and sticks to the simple stuff. I have another friend that has the cash, enjoys gaming, but just does not have the skill level to reach end game. I know some really cool people out there that are in the same boat. Well I want a game where we can hang together and still do it all someday. A group of new friends will not all be elitists for sure...
I think it's healthy to have a game that appeals to a wide variety of skill levels, and there's no reason we can't have that. Lots of games do.
I don't think it's a good idea to alienate people by making the entire game over the top, nor do I think it's a good idea to not have challenge mode raids of extremely high difficulty to keep those players occupied.
EQ did that well. Content for people of all skill/commitment levels.
Pyye said:Oh and sticking to the topic title, MMOs are easy in the sense of questing as you level and everything associated with not dying hardly at all along the way. We got off on a tangent about raiding, which upper tier raiding is certainly NOT easy!
Yeah, quest hubs suck and are honestly just a super lazy way for developers to spoon feed people content until endgame (endgame, alternatively known as "onlygame" in a lot of games).
It's a lot easier to design 50 trivial quests in a small area than to design large, compelling dungeons that carry some actual risk, but also reward people well enough that they actually want to do the content.
Pantheon team has their hands full... I want to see support go through the roof so they have every resource needed to make EXACTLY what they want and not have to eliminate or cut corners to finish. I can't wait to help during Alpha, hope we get a big voice during process!
Pyye
Pyye said:Pantheon team has their hands full... I want to see support go through the roof so they have every resource needed to make EXACTLY what they want and not have to eliminate or cut corners to finish. I can't wait to help during Alpha, hope we get a big voice during process!
Pyye
For sure. Time is always a factor too, though.
A team with a lower budget who invests more time can make a superior product to a team with a high budget and a small amount of time. Rushing a product is never good, even for a AAA studio.
Now that they have actual investors I'm assuming that means that the development process might have a few more deadlines here and there, but hopefully they (as you said) take their time and don't cut any corners.
Liav said:Pyye said:Oh and sticking to the topic title, MMOs are easy in the sense of questing as you level and everything associated with not dying hardly at all along the way. We got off on a tangent about raiding, which upper tier raiding is certainly NOT easy!
Yeah, quest hubs suck and are honestly just a super lazy way for developers to spoon feed people content until endgame (endgame, alternatively known as "onlygame" in a lot of games).
It's a lot easier to design 50 trivial quests in a small area than to design large, compelling dungeons that carry some actual risk, but also reward people well enough that they actually want to do the content.
This isn't true at all and has been discussed pretty thouroughly by Raph Koster on his blog. Quests take infinately more time, money, and manpower than your average public dungeon.
Now i'm not disagreeing with your assessment that giant sprawling dungeons are more fun, which they are to me, but calling quests super lazy is disingenuous.
Taledar said:I realize that there are many factors in what have made current MMO's easy, but I think I've figured out the BIGGEST reason why they are easy today. With the combination of allowing you to scroll you camera view out 150yards into the air combined with the "Spell Lines" that show up whenever a spell is going to be cast so you know the EXACT spot you have to move out of before the spell is even cast.
What do you guys think?
I do think that the majority of raids and group combat these days is pretty easy. Why? It's simple mechanics. Mechanics these days seem to be all about dps and not standing in the fire. (And, yes, "Spell Lines" are a big part, too.) Pretty much anyone that is a half-way decent player can go to youtube, watch a video, and be successful in any encounter. It's not really that hard.
I think the nostalgia and yearning for old style raids and playstyles isn't exactly about how "hard" it was, but more about how teams had to actually work together. We talked to eachother, and coordinated, and died, and argued, and learned. That's what made it challenging. It wasn't just about individiuals standing in the right place and getting by by just doing their basic job, it was more about teamwork and overcoming challenges by working together, even if you actually were standing in the wrong place. You had to know your teammates. You had to cooperate with them. These days, you just need to "know the fight" and you win. I guess that can be challenging, but it's nowhere near as fullfilling.
Some people dig the new style. I prefer the old.
*edit P.S. (Because this topic has gone farther than I did above.) I have no problem with quest hubs. I think towns, outposts, and cities are all natural quest hubs. I have no problem with quests (and lots of them); just don't give me exclamation points over every npc in town...make me talk to people and interact, make the npc's not just give me quests for the heck of it. Quest hubs can be done, but faction, race, class, talent, etc..., should all be a part of that.
IMO, it's fear, or lack of.
If the only consequence for failing is 5 minutes of your time, then there is an attitude of "let's try and see what happens".
Change that consequence to xp loss, difficulty in recovering your corpse, and that attitude changes to "Are we sure we are capable of this, or should we move elsewhere?"
Old EQ raids versus modern raids, is somewhat a moot point. The biggest difference is what happens if you fail, how does that change your strategy, your planning, your abort plan and time, your raid group makeup, what is the raids acceptable casualty rate, not to mention the number of people who will bail if they think the raid leader is an imbicile leading them to their sure death.
Zandil said:It's all about Money, easy games opens your game up to more players of all types, ages, skill levels etc, more players = bigger population = bigger profit.
WoW was a prime example, classic WoW was no where as easy as it is today, clasisc didn't have the population it did during it's prime, along came BC and WOTLK expacs, during these xpacs Blizzard took the line of everyone should see all content, they opened up raids to everyone of all skill levels and removed the skill barriers to all content, and hey presto the peeked at 12 Mil subs.
Bingo.
Liav, I both agree and disagree with your take on difficulty vis a vis the raid game. I agree that modern elite raiding indeed has crazy difficulty and tough mechanics. Even in current EQ1, which is easier, more accessible, and generally a cause of heartburn for us Velious era folks - the raid game is ridiculously hard compared to how it was. That said, part of what made raiding so hard back then was logistical and mechanical issues that simply made raiding harder. There was no queue to magically appear at the raid spot, you traveled there. There was no iLVL check of the gear before you could queue, the raid mobs gear checked you. There was no Team Speak or Ventrilo, everything was typed. And you could zoom EQ1 out just fine, but there were no warning circles/lines/fire indicators outside of the chat box. The actual fight might have been easier in theory, but in practice, the mechanics and logistics made it a much bigger pain in the collective arse.
Overall, what has made MMOs easier is making them so everyone can solo to max level easily on a predetermined linked path of quests hubs, and the fact that there are a variety of solo or random zerg activities that one can do at max level that get you to one, maybe two tiers below max bleeding edge raid gear. In old EQ1, there was raids and only raids. You may get a one-off item here and there, but for the most part, if you wanted the "purples/oranges" of the day, you HAD to raid. Period. There was no "repeat daily quest for 21 days, purchase raid loot from vendor" path to great items. There was raiding, raiding or uhm...oh yeah, raiding. That was harder.
There was more NO DROP. That was harder. There was longer, tougher leveling with lost exp and de-leveling for dying too much. Again, harder. Within any game the raids are different difficulty, so obviously there'd be +/- between different games. The point is that modern MMOs are less punishing overall than the old style "pretty MUD, took wrong turn, dead and minus one level" games. Old raids just had more of those external mechanics that made them feel harder, even if technically, they were generic tank 'n' spanks.
Venjenz said:Liav, I both agree and disagree with your take on difficulty vis a vis the raid game. I agree that modern elite raiding indeed has crazy difficulty and tough mechanics. Even in current EQ1, which is easier, more accessible, and generally a cause of heartburn for us Velious era folks - the raid game is ridiculously hard compared to how it was. That said, part of what made raiding so hard back then was logistical and mechanical issues that simply made raiding harder. There was no queue to magically appear at the raid spot, you traveled there. There was no iLVL check of the gear before you could queue, the raid mobs gear checked you. There was no Team Speak or Ventrilo, everything was typed. And you could zoom EQ1 out just fine, but there were no warning circles/lines/fire indicators outside of the chat box. The actual fight might have been easier in theory, but in practice, the mechanics and logistics made it a much bigger pain in the collective arse.
Overall, what has made MMOs easier is making them so everyone can solo to max level easily on a predetermined linked path of quests hubs, and the fact that there are a variety of solo or random zerg activities that one can do at max level that get you to one, maybe two tiers below max bleeding edge raid gear. In old EQ1, there was raids and only raids. You may get a one-off item here and there, but for the most part, if you wanted the "purples/oranges" of the day, you HAD to raid. Period. There was no "repeat daily quest for 21 days, purchase raid loot from vendor" path to great items. There was raiding, raiding or uhm...oh yeah, raiding. That was harder.
There was more NO DROP. That was harder. There was longer, tougher leveling with lost exp and de-leveling for dying too much. Again, harder. Within any game the raids are different difficulty, so obviously there'd be +/- between different games. The point is that modern MMOs are less punishing overall than the old style "pretty MUD, took wrong turn, dead and minus one level" games. Old raids just had more of those external mechanics that made them feel harder, even if technically, they were generic tank 'n' spanks.
Well said and I agree on all points. Old school raiding felt way different than todays raiding. For me at least, there was more buildup, more preperation, more anticipation. The sense of progression and accomplishment was also greater. The sweetest victories were hard fought and came after a series of long and tedious wipe recoveries. Tweaking heal rotations, raid positioning, enchanters working together on a mezz strategy. Yet, these encounters were mostly tank and spanks with some surprise mechanics and adds thrown in for flavor. Even still, they were often exeedingly challenging. If the heal rotation broke, it was game over. If one of the wizards nuked too hard too quickly, the boss would turn and cleave the entire raid. If an enchanter missed a mez or wasnt quick enough, adds would aggro the healers and wipe the raid. So many things needed to align perfectly to pull these off. The dependance on each other was intense.
One person slipping up could wipe the entire raid.
Sylee said:I do think that the majority of raids and group combat these days is pretty easy. Why? It's simple mechanics. Mechanics these days seem to be all about dps and not standing in the fire. (And, yes, "Spell Lines" are a big part, too.) Pretty much anyone that is a half-way decent player can go to youtube, watch a video, and be successful in any encounter. It's not really that hard.
I think the nostalgia and yearning for old style raids and playstyles isn't exactly about how "hard" it was, but more about how teams had to actually work together. We talked to eachother, and coordinated, and died, and argued, and learned. That's what made it challenging. It wasn't just about individiuals standing in the right place and getting by by just doing their basic job, it was more about teamwork and overcoming challenges by working together, even if you actually were standing in the wrong place. You had to know your teammates. You had to cooperate with them. These days, you just need to "know the fight" and you win. I guess that can be challenging, but it's nowhere near as fullfilling.
Some people dig the new style. I prefer the old.
The problem in new games (in my WoW experience anyway) isn't that the encounters are simple. Some encounters would be quite hard to figure out sometimes. The problem is guides, playthru, youtube & twitch. To echoe Raidan, the problem is the internet. You could have all the learning and arguing, etc you want, but you'd have to play with like-minded, spoiler-free players. Good luck forming a guild of those.
I mean the causes of a lot of the development towards casual gaming is that gamers want it, and I think that's in large part to the way the world works today. Everyone has a cell phone, most times people can't get in 2-3 hour gaming sessions or more because the damn phone is ringing and someone wants to go do something. People are in constant contact all the time, it's just a culture shift. That's why I think Pantheon has an opportunity to bring people back to a time where things weren't so fast paced. Any MMO out there today I can finish in 2 weeks or less, I'm talking end game raiding and all... it's really bad. I want to play a game again where I can't possibly keep up, because it's so slow on progression. The carrot on a stick should never be eaten.
Rallyd said:I mean the causes of a lot of the development towards casual gaming is that gamers want it, and I think that's in large part to the way the world works today. Everyone has a cell phone, most times people can't get in 2-3 hour gaming sessions or more because the damn phone is ringing and someone wants to go do something. People are in constant contact all the time, it's just a culture shift. That's why I think Pantheon has an opportunity to bring people back to a time where things weren't so fast paced. Any MMO out there today I can finish in 2 weeks or less, I'm talking end game raiding and all... it's really bad. I want to play a game again where I can't possibly keep up, because it's so slow on progression. The carrot on a stick should never be eaten.
One thing I truly hope Pantheon takes away from this is slow leveling. Let us get immersed... Let us experience the entire game and work at leveling. Do not let us get to level 10+ in a day... The rate is debatable and there have been many posts about it. All I know is it should take some serious play time to reach next levels!
Pyye said:One thing I truly hope Pantheon takes away from this is slow leveling. Let us get immersed... Let us experience the entire game and work at leveling. Do not let us get to level 10+ in a day... The rate is debatable and there have been many posts about it. All I know is it should take some serious play time to reach next levels!
/Cheer
Spell lines are far from being the only reason. In so many MMOs today, I could solo charge a group of 3-4 mobs that are tagged as appropriate level for me, and kill them with ease. If I did that in EQ 1, those mobs would kill me, every time.
In modern MMOs experience is so fast, you level up to max just running from zone to the next zone, quest to quest, hardly even remembering where you were. And even that was not enough, so they gave people exp for just walking around, exp for buying a potion, exp for not logging in for a while,...
Items? Good God. You can gear yourself up as you go and solo level, each level range of soloable mobs gives you enough random drops to last you to the next level range. No need to quest for items, no need to trade for items, no need to craft, no need to go into dungeons, no need for nothing.
And by giving everything, they took everything away. Because when there is no need for any of those things, people won't do them, and then, 90% of the in-game experience (not exp points, but what you're supposed to do and see) will be skipped, never lived through, never talked about, never remembered.