What's up with game companies making their MMOs so easy nowadays? I'm not talking about the speed at which it takes to achieve things, I would not say that more grind = more difficulty. But boss encounters should be made so much harder, take WoW for example, the new content is cleared extremely fast by the high end tier of gamers. I vote for games that are insanely hard, the sense of accomplishment is so much bigger when you need skill, dedication and strategy to achieve something and not 10 days of grinding.

Now I might be wrong, and this might not be the case at all. If that is the case please enlighten me

OP, I'm with you, but games are more like interactive movies now, people would prefer the game to more or less play itself rather than to provide any challenge at all.  As long as the masses continue to be mesmerized with flashy lights, boobs, and godmode then they'll keep throwing money at the devs for these so-called "games".

You have to go way out of your way to find a challenge in video games anymore, usually not until you beat the whole thing then you might get a harder mode etc, or a few optional hard bosses to kill.  Heck, I remember when it was almost necessary to cheat just to win at all.  MMOs are even worse because to many they're just an escape.  Those guys don't care to challenge anything, but just to drool on themselves while they make-believe they're flying gods lol.  No offense to Aion players, but the wings are one of the reasons I haven't even downloaded a demo of that game.  I don't want to be some winged god lol, I'd much rather be a normal guy who works at an art or skill and actually earns the title of hero, but that's just my tastes.

Players now are too used to being spoon fed. Devs are not going to risk 10 milion dollars or 50 or whatver to create a challenging MMORPG and see how everybody complains about having a life blah blah, which is not really the problem because you can spend 2 hours a week and still want something challenging, no, the problem is that they really want to get everything easily.

 I agree that games are probably easier today, but you must consider that the MMO community has now a lot of experience, people usually keep the same roles over the games which helps a lot.

When you PUG, you still meet people who are completly new to MMOs and with this people, even the easy content can be very hard to clear.

MMO's aren't easier. They're just less tedious, less time consuming and more focused on providing challenge without unnecessarily harsh penalties for failure.

Its hard to argue that. Its obvious they are making everything easier. So many boss fights become tank and spank. I miss the days where everyone had to come together to achieve a boss victory. *sigh* missing the good ol days of effort=reward and not time=reward

Yes.

The higher you ability to produce content, the easier you can make the content.

So people can chew it faster and fast food it for 30 minutes and go do something else outside the game while feeling satisfied.

The problem is that only a few game companies are big enough and with enough revenue to afford making content at a faster rate to always keep people filled.

So what those game companies can do is make it easier, but artificially longer.

There is always analog comparisons with other games in the market so, if you make it too hard, you might lose customers to another game that makes it easier. This is not obvious at first, but keep reading and you will understand.

Im using this words "harder" and "easier", but in reality, the subject we are dealing with between the lines is "entertainment" and "satisfaction".

We might not understand how "easier/harder" gets confused with "entertainment" or "satisfaction" at first, but it gets explained when you add the "content/creativity" issue. Since its very hard to create true variation through creativity, they cant afford to ask too much effort from the players, since the trade off of "development investment in creativity and interesting content" versus the "how much effort we are demanding from the players to this" is not worth enough of their time.

So instead of producing better content that would be worth doing by the players, even if it was challenging (like single player rpgs with awesome stories), its easier for them to stick with procedurally produced content, that doesnt demand too much time and effort from the developers, and the side effect is that the developers know that going with such route they cant ask too much of the players, or else they would quit (rightly so).

In the ends, its like a contract, we make a shitty game, but we will make it easy, so once you, player, dont complain about it, since it coherent with the time and effort you have to spent to beat it. And by beating it, players get intoxicated with the satisfaction/reward they get, even though they are empty of meaning/story, mainly numbers.

As developers low the standards, reducing difficulty becomes the trade-off to prevent player flee.

It also explain the fact that games nowadays are too combat oriented, players focus on power, and rushing through boring and easy content to reach "end game" content in one month or less. And many other cancers of such design decisions derived from linear games.

That explain the misteriously relation between "easier/harder" and "entertainment/satisfaction" and why game companies start to make easier and easier games.

In short, its like the game companies lower the difficulty as if begging for players. "Come here, we give you everything, play our game, we make you feel a god, join now". Something like it.

And then we think: I wouldnt play your game even if you paid me. (RMT games)

Its these types of games that fall from heaven (to attract to you) to hell very fast, and turn against you and disrespect you, changing the game mechanics to force RMT and profit fast.

Welcome to satisfying the market of the "me now" generation.  I tend to believe that older gamers (not talking 50s here, more like 30 and above) like a lot more challenge in their games than the younger folk.  There will be exceptions to the rule, but ultimately these games are built for their strongest markets.  If the younger generation wanted more challenge, devs would make it so.

 I love easymode all the way along ( I even have singer that to my rol friends ), but this is getting ridiculous. I want challenge!. 

Originally posted by Teatime

What's up with game companies making their MMOs so easy nowadays? I'm not talking about the speed at which it takes to achieve things, I would not say that more grind = more difficulty. But boss encounters should be made so much harder, take WoW for example, the new content is cleared extremely fast by the high end tier of gamers. I vote for games that are insanely hard, the sense of accomplishment is so much bigger when you need skill, dedication and strategy to achieve something and not 10 days of grinding.

Now I might be wrong, and this might not be the case at all. If that is the case please enlighten me

try darkfall, its far from easy, believe me :P

Originally posted by zaxxon23

Welcome to satisfying the market of the "me now" generation.  I tend to believe that older gamers (not talking 50s here, more like 30 and above) like a lot more challenge in their games than the younger folk.  There will be exceptions to the rule, but ultimately these games are built for their strongest markets.  If the younger generation wanted more challenge, devs would make it so.

i myself am 18 (yes my account lies., lol) and prefer the cost of effort over the cost of time in MMO's, thus i play Darkfall, its really challenging

There are plenty of games out their that will meet everyone's desired challenge level.  If someone wants a  game that you consider to be "Easy", let them have your fun.  There's no need to go around trying to tear them, nor the games, down.  People have different tastes, and they look for different things when they sit down to play a game.  Some want a challenge, some want to socialize, others just want to lose themselves for a little while.   That doesn't mean there is anything wrong with them, nor with the game. 

Just because a game doesn't cater to your specific wants, doesn't make it a bad game.

Originally posted by vladakov

try darkfall, its far from easy, believe me :P

I second that. Just started playing last week, and to be honest if I didnt have the EVE background I have, I most likely would have gotten frustrated and quit.

Originally posted by vladakov

Originally posted by zaxxon23

Welcome to satisfying the market of the "me now" generation.  I tend to believe that older gamers (not talking 50s here, more like 30 and above) like a lot more challenge in their games than the younger folk.  There will be exceptions to the rule, but ultimately these games are built for their strongest markets.  If the younger generation wanted more challenge, devs would make it so.

i myself am 18 (yes my account lies., lol) and prefer the cost of effort over the cost of time in MMO's, thus i play Darkfall, its really challenging

Like I said, exceptions to every rule.  If you were like your peers, you'd be stuck in WoW too.

I agree. I left WoW for that very reason, as well as the 'do such and such instance 8 billion times to get 1 lousy piece of gear you need to move on to the next one' crapfest. Actually, I only stayed on for as long as I did because of the friends I made there. They dumbed it down too much even for my casual tastes. Nothing really means anything anymore, because anybody can do just about anything whenever they feel like it. Newer players don't have to go through half the BS I did to get to where I was at that point, thereby trivializing my own personal accomplishments. That and depriving me of my schadenfreude.

I never thought I'd be more on the side of the 'hardcore' crowd, but now that I've been through a similar situation myself, I've gained a lot more understanding of where they're coming from. I still think stuff like forced FFA PvP with full loot is friggin' retarded though, so I haven't hung up my carebear ways completely. :)

And before I get jumped on, no, WoW wasn't my first MMO. I played AC for a couple months, ditto for Shadowbane, and EQ refused to run on the PC I had at the time I tried it. WoW was merely the first one that circumstance allowed me to invest any real amount of time into.

Originally posted by Teatime

What's up with game companies making their MMOs so easy nowadays? I'm not talking about the speed at which it takes to achieve things, I would not say that more grind = more difficulty. But boss encounters should be made so much harder, take WoW for example, the new content is cleared extremely fast by the high end tier of gamers. I vote for games that are insanely hard, the sense of accomplishment is so much bigger when you need skill, dedication and strategy to achieve something and not 10 days of grinding.

Now I might be wrong, and this might not be the case at all. If that is the case please enlighten me

99% of the players are NOT high end tier of gamers .. there you go.

And you are wrong.

Sorry, but they've been easy ever since the first genre(UO, AC1, EQ1) came out.

From there, it's been downhill ever since.

Hopefully the market will come back around some day for those of us that don't like to be led by the nose through the themepark.

pve has never really been hard :)

Originally posted by zaxxon23

Welcome to satisfying the market of the "me now" generation.  I tend to believe that older gamers (not talking 50s here, more like 30 and above) like a lot more challenge in their games than the younger folk.  There will be exceptions to the rule, but ultimately these games are built for their strongest markets.  If the younger generation wanted more challenge, devs would make it so.

Long time reader first time poster... :)

Had to post on this one,

I am 17 years old, been MMO'ing since I was 9 and I absolutely HATE how easy MMO's are getting... Its fucking ridiculous that so many people actively campaign for more time consuming features instead of skill based features.

In so many MMOs all the devs do is either make content easier or in even worse situations make content easier but INCREASE the amount of time you need to spend playing...

If a dev could offer me a game where there was an option for players with not much skill to invest a lot of time verse players with a lot of skill to use that skill to clear content easier instead of spending heaps of time then that would make me very happy!

Kind of like Vanilla WoW, my guild cleared content because we had skill not time investment(not that the content was very hard anyway :P) but compared to modern content which is a complete joke then it seems hard.

Why WoW you ask? Well I havent been playing wow since WOLK came out, enough was enough for me, easymode factor was just to instense. The reason is that so many stupid companies think oh wow is making a lot of money doing this so I will copy it (ALA warhammer) which is stupid. As soon as devs see that wow has covered their niche (the easymode pve based area) and diversify into other markets (Hardcore audience) we can finally see a POLISHED (not some dodgy indie developer) hardcore game that will be profitable.

I dont class myself as hardcore (I have a life) but I enjoy a challenge, I think that the majority of people who are alienated in the MMO industry atm are people like that, we just want a game that offers some stimulation and some degree of intelligence that we can still play as a game not a second job.

Anyway just posting my (to long) 2 cents from someone of "Gen Y", although most people my generation are as quoted the "me me me" crowd there is still a lot of younger players who need some challenge :)

Becoming too easy?  If you're an old school MMO player like myself, you've probably felt that they've been too easy for years.  Yes, I can't stand the way these games lead you around by the hand nowadays.  They are considered time saving devices, but I call them boring.