Originally posted by Zeppelin4

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by Zeppelin4

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by Zeppelin4

 

For my wife and I Wow was our favotire game for leveling. Its sad what they did to that game and I really have no idea why. Nerfs to mobs, phasing, speed leveling, account gear, sigh, you made me cry. :(

Phasing - i have no problem with .. have nothing to do with difficulty of the game.

speed leveling - i also have no problem with. I am leveling my alt in Diablo 3 on high monster power, and it is much faster than before. However, it is still fun as long as there is a challenge .. and it is there with high monster power.

account gear - it is not a problem if you can up the difficulty.

It boils down to this .... given reasonable gear (and i include account gear), fights are too easy. In fact, if you do dungeons (LFD) for leveling, you can just dps the boss without worrying ANY mechanics and he usually dies in seconds. Why? Because everyone is over-gear with account gear and blues.

The solution is simple .. just put a difficulty slider in the LFD like Diablo 3. If you scale the boss hp by 10x, its damage by 3x, and xp award/gold by say 50% ... it will be fun again. Now you have to calibrate the numbers right, but it can be done.

In part I agree with this. I say instead of sliders you have difficulty servers. My original post was not about the only the difficulty of the game but what was also fun.  I guess then it was a bit off topic but whats new on MMORPG.

Personally i like slider than servers because you are not locked in. Today i may feel adventurous, and want a bigger chance of that uber drop, so i go for a higher challenge. Tomorrow, i just want to kill 20 min doing a farming run, so i lower the difficulty.

Difficulty server won't be as flexible, although it will be better than nothing.

The problem with sliders how do you handle if someone comes along and is on the lowest slider and attacks your mob and kills it in two swings? I feel a server setting would keep the game more social and a slider is a bit more solo not that most mmo are not solo focused anymore. 

1) Have the sliders on instanced dungeons .. and the leader set it. So if you don't like the difficulty, don't go in with him.

2) Open world is more problematic. There are several ways:

- let the other guy kill it in 2 swings. You deal with it socially.

- if you tag the mob, it is yours and only you can fight it (unless the other person is in your group). Tagging mob is already in most MMOs .. adding a function so only you and your group can damage it .. should not be a big deal

- always use the difficulty of the first person who tag it.

3) Sure, a server setting will make the game more social and less convenient. Personally i care about the convenience (since my mood of how dififculty i want my game can change) much more than the social aspect. You probably are different.

Originally posted by DavisFlight

Originally posted by Fusion

"Back in the day" MMORPG's were a niche, for a niche customer base.

With WoW, the customer base grew substantially with casuals, overwhelming the "niche" population, thusly every MMORPG ever since has been catered more towards the bigger audience (the casuals) as they bring in more money than the real 'diehards of old'.

It's just business in the end, and where the most money is made from, that's whom the companies cater for.

Thats the idea, but it hasn't actually worked, has it? We have 8 years of failed mass market casual MMOs. Most of them (almost all of them) have less subscribers than "niche" MMOs did back in dial up days for christs sake.

WoW is an outlier. No MMO is going to have that many subs. Themepark is just as niche as anythiing else. DAoC had 250k subs at its peak and held that number for years.

AoC held its subs for such a short period that two of its publishers went bankrupt, and most of the people involved were fired.

The money is not in casual games. If anything, Eve and Darkfall prove that the good long term money is in catering to niche groups.

Really?

DCUO, DDO, LOTRO are all thriving. May not be as big as wow, but they are putting out more content & expansion. Hardly sounds like failed games. Even TOR is surviving.

Originally posted by ozmono

I wonder if people look at MMOs at a time when they enjoyed them better and start attributing the inevitable decline of interest with them on things like difficulty. Or in other words are people just wearing nostalgia glasses or is game difficulty really so much worse nowdays and as detrimental to current MMOs as some would have you believe?

I have an example for you to ponder for this oldest of questions. It's not about the games entirely it's about the players as well. Now I myself have come to this realization a while ago and I've made my peace with it. For as you surely cannot believe that a single player can enjoy all mmos, likewise a single mmo cannot be enjoyed by all players. Now on to my example:

We don't have the ignorance of youth anymore. Ask yourself this, 30 years ago if you could have one of two things: time or money what would you wish for? I think a majority would say money, I know I would have. What about right now? Money still? I bet it would be split. Now in 30 years from now if I asked you the same question again what would you wish for? I'd bet a majority would say time now. Unless somewhere down the road some realized early on that time is precious or someone else realized the good they could do with more money.

My main point is that our focus has changed along with the situations. This is why I say it's the players and the games to blame. What was your focus back then? Gear? Community? Power? Fame? Challenge? Like soldiers from our first tour of duty, some of us have an easier time than others adpating back to our civilian lives. So much so, that we can handle multiple tours and not miss a beat. Others are changed for life even after one tour and some poor souls seem to bring war wherever they go.

Originally posted by Enigmatus

Originally posted by furidiam

There are no more real mmo's now. All this new stuff is catering to the short attention span customers. Look at the success of games that are out on the smart phone/face book. These new games are chasing WOW and these short games looking at the profits.

Games used to be made by gamers for gamers. Now it is corporations going after gamers wallets. This is what made games now a days what they are.

That's dumb. Games have always been made for money.

Yes but money was not 100% of the reason. The EQ devs said they wanted to make a game they themselves want to play. Same with Darkfall. EvE online even.

Games really were made by gamers for gamers. Somebody who had a cool idea for a world and brought it to life so others people could enjoy along side them while making moeny in teh process. Now its more about just the money part.

Originally posted by Zecktorin

Originally posted by Enigmatus

Originally posted by furidiam

There are no more real mmo's now. All this new stuff is catering to the short attention span customers. Look at the success of games that are out on the smart phone/face book. These new games are chasing WOW and these short games looking at the profits.

Games used to be made by gamers for gamers. Now it is corporations going after gamers wallets. This is what made games now a days what they are.

That's dumb. Games have always been made for money.

Yes but money was not 100% of the reason. The EQ devs said they wanted to make a game they themselves want to play. Same with Darkfall. EvE online even.

Games really were made by gamers for gamers. Somebody who had a cool idea for a world and brought it to life so others people could enjoy along side them while making moeny in teh process. Now its more about just the money part.

Personally i don't care who make the game if it entertains me and it is fun.

I have a lot of fun playing Dishonored, recently. Would i enjoy it less if it is made purely to make a profit? No.

I do feel that an equal level monster in old games like EQ or FFXI would easily give you a much harder fight than an equal level monster today. The general approach to creatures in MMO's today I feel is more about making them a time exercise, rather than a hurdle to overcome.Quests were also much more demanding, usually sending you to get out rare items that could sometimes take a couple days to scrounge together.

As someone mentioned earlier, a lot of games like to clearly seperate weaker monsters from "elites" or whatever, so you rarely if ever run the risk of accidentally running into something that's tougher than what you were expecting.

There is also just a large amount of information you have available a couple mouse clicks away now. Wiki's/walkthroughs/youtube have really spoiled a lot out of the experience of exploring and learning a game. A lot of this kind of information seems like it's just being incoporated ingame now with quest trackers literally pointing on a map where to go and such.

Originally posted by Wolfenpride

There is also just a large amount of information you have available a couple mouse clicks away now. Wiki's/walkthroughs/youtube have really spoiled a lot out of the experience of exploring and learning a game. A lot of this kind of information seems like it's just being incoporated ingame now with quest trackers literally pointing on a map where to go and such.

To be fair, a lot of these functions are included in the games because players want them.

Take wow as an example. Before markers of quests on maps, there are lots of addons that does that. They are extremely popular. Before the interface shows you actual health numbers, there are addons that does not and they are extremely popular.

Blizz is just adding functions that players want.

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by DavisFlight

Originally posted by Fusion

"Back in the day" MMORPG's were a niche, for a niche customer base.

With WoW, the customer base grew substantially with casuals, overwhelming the "niche" population, thusly every MMORPG ever since has been catered more towards the bigger audience (the casuals) as they bring in more money than the real 'diehards of old'.

It's just business in the end, and where the most money is made from, that's whom the companies cater for.

Thats the idea, but it hasn't actually worked, has it? We have 8 years of failed mass market casual MMOs. Most of them (almost all of them) have less subscribers than "niche" MMOs did back in dial up days for christs sake.

WoW is an outlier. No MMO is going to have that many subs. Themepark is just as niche as anythiing else. DAoC had 250k subs at its peak and held that number for years.

AoC held its subs for such a short period that two of its publishers went bankrupt, and most of the people involved were fired.

The money is not in casual games. If anything, Eve and Darkfall prove that the good long term money is in catering to niche groups.

Really?

DCUO, DDO, LOTRO are all thriving. May not be as big as wow, but they are putting out more content & expansion. Hardly sounds like failed games. Even TOR is surviving.

TOR HAS to keep going. It's their only hope to make back some of the investment to leave it up. It's clearly not doing well considering half the dev team has been sacked and its down to 8 servers.

LotRO has been limping along in mediocrity since it launched. Never a runaway success, never a full failure, until recently. The Turbine earnings reports to WB show that they're not doing well.

And DDO and DCUO were both MASSIVE failures for a long time. DDO was the punch line of every joke for a good 3-4 years until it went FTP, which briefly revived life in it. DCUO also wasn't a very big success, considering its IP, it was forced to go FTP and downsize the dev team.

If "They haven't closed yet" is your metric of doing well...then nearly every MMO ever has done well.

Let's be real though, if "themepark" is the way of the future, the way all games should be, how come there hasn't been a single largely successful themepark outside of WoW? How come they all shrink after launch, instead of growing?

hard or easy isnt that just opinions that will be different with every person?  some people might think makeing mobs harder to kill by having us do less damage to them and having them do a little more damage to us makes that encounter harder. personally  i find that to be a cop out. harder to me would be makeing the challenge about knowledge of the situation. tactics on how to kill a mob not just swing my weapon 100 more times.

aim high? aim low? is the mob more vulnerable to fire? or maybe slashing? good thing i have multiple weapons. oh wait if this mob hits me twice with his magic im dead i better keep moving!  If i attack that mob im going to have his whole crew on me i better be carefull and only fight groups i can handle.  Damn if i die way out here in the middle of that mess of mobs im going to need help getting my body back i better be carefull.

Those are all things that i use to have to deal with in a older MMO. in todays MMOs i have my one weapon for every encounter no matter what. i stand there and just swing it a million times pressing some skills when they are off coodown. if i die who cares i just come back to this area in about 2 min ( because anything longer would be considered stupid and this game is dumb ).

There is no real threat from the mobs in games anymore, if we start off at level 1 and can actually die to a mob people would have a melt down on how lame that is. personally i would welcome the challenge from day one. tired of all the hand holding.

Originally posted by DavisFlight

Originally posted by Rimmersman

Originally posted by Thorbrand

Originally posted by Xiaoki

MMOs were never hard.

Yes, people are looking at the "good old days" with nostalgia.

Needless time sinks and badly programmed combat systems do not equate to difficulty.

I would disagree. Today's MMOs only have maybe 10% of the content and features of old MMOs. They only focus on combat and graphics. Not to meantion it is all instanced. All MMOs are grinds and today's MMOs are more mindless grinding than old school MMOs. Because they don't have any content. MMOs are suppose to be like playing PnP RPGs not single player action adventures that are not MMOs.

 

Can you give a time scale of todays mmos are you talking GW2 or Rift or AOC or further back.

2004 to now.

 

Basically, since, and including WoW.

Hell, WoW doesn't even have housing.

Well Vanguard has just as many features of the pre 2004 MMOs if not more.

Open world housing. http://wiki.silkyvenom.com/index.php/House

Crafting. http://vanguard.wikia.com/wiki/Crafting

Havesting http://vanguard.wikia.com/wiki/Harvesting

Diplomacy. http://vanguard.wikia.com/wiki/Diplomacy

Caravans

Manuels http://vanguard.wikia.com/wiki/Manuals You can also learn skills of certain mobs,attack them and they will use a skill that is specific to your class and you will learn that skill. You find these mobs through exploration out in the world.

Non instanced dungeons. http://vanguard.wikia.com/wiki/Dungeons

Raids overland and dungeon raids.

Fully controllable flying mounts.

More that 40 land mounts.

Apperance system

LFD System

Brotherhood system http://vanguard.wikia.com/wiki/Brotherhood

Mentoring http://vanguard.wikia.com/wiki/Grouping#Mentoring

Vast player made guild halls. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gYJSIyp59U

Fully controllable ships of all seizes that are all player made. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfYgDU2ghwI&feature=related

Vast open world.

15 classes.

19 races.

A robust fishing system that puts all other fishing systems to shame, fresh water fishing and deep water fishing.

It did start off with FFA PVP.

Seems to me you've been playing the wrong MMOs

Originally posted by DavisFlight

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by DavisFlight

Originally posted by Fusion

"Back in the day" MMORPG's were a niche, for a niche customer base.

With WoW, the customer base grew substantially with casuals, overwhelming the "niche" population, thusly every MMORPG ever since has been catered more towards the bigger audience (the casuals) as they bring in more money than the real 'diehards of old'.

It's just business in the end, and where the most money is made from, that's whom the companies cater for.

Thats the idea, but it hasn't actually worked, has it? We have 8 years of failed mass market casual MMOs. Most of them (almost all of them) have less subscribers than "niche" MMOs did back in dial up days for christs sake.

WoW is an outlier. No MMO is going to have that many subs. Themepark is just as niche as anythiing else. DAoC had 250k subs at its peak and held that number for years.

AoC held its subs for such a short period that two of its publishers went bankrupt, and most of the people involved were fired.

The money is not in casual games. If anything, Eve and Darkfall prove that the good long term money is in catering to niche groups.

Really?

DCUO, DDO, LOTRO are all thriving. May not be as big as wow, but they are putting out more content & expansion. Hardly sounds like failed games. Even TOR is surviving.

TOR HAS to keep going. It's their only hope to make back some of the investment to leave it up. It's clearly not doing well considering half the dev team has been sacked and its down to 8 servers.

LotRO has been limping along in mediocrity since it launched. Never a runaway success, never a full failure, until recently. The Turbine earnings reports to WB show that they're not doing well.

And DDO and DCUO were both MASSIVE failures for a long time. DDO was the punch line of every joke for a good 3-4 years until it went FTP, which briefly revived life in it. DCUO also wasn't a very big success, considering its IP, it was forced to go FTP and downsize the dev team.

If "They haven't closed yet" is your metric of doing well...then nearly every MMO ever has done well.

Let's be real though, if "themepark" is the way of the future, the way all games should be, how come there hasn't been a single largely successful themepark outside of WoW? How come they all shrink after launch, instead of growing?

How about GW2? How about Diablo 3 (not a mmo, but close enough)? Heck, how about GW1?

Originally posted by DrunkWolf

hard or easy isnt that just opinions that will be different with every person?  some people might think makeing mobs harder to kill by having us do less damage to them and having them do a little more damage to us makes that encounter harder. personally  i find that to be a cop out. harder to me would be makeing the challenge about knowledge of the situation. tactics on how to kill a mob not just swing my weapon 100 more times.

 

aim high? aim low? is the mob more vulnerable to fire? or maybe slashing? good thing i have multiple weapons. oh wait if this mob hits me twice with his magic im dead i better keep moving!  If i attack that mob im going to have his whole crew on me i better be carefull and only fight groups i can handle.  Damn if i die way out here in the middle of that mess of mobs im going to need help getting my body back i better be carefull.

 

Those are all things that i use to have to deal with in a older MMO. in todays MMOs i have my one weapon for every encounter no matter what. i stand there and just swing it a million times pressing some skills when they are off coodown. if i die who cares i just come back to this area in about 2 min ( because anything longer would be considered stupid and this game is dumb ).

 

There is no real threat from the mobs in games anymore, if we start off at level 1 and can actually die to a mob people would have a melt down on how lame that is. personally i would welcome the challenge from day one. tired of all the hand holding.

That is the whole point i was trying to make. That is why a difficulty slider is the solution.

There is a game you actually can die (very often i may add), at Level 1. Diablo 3. Set MP to 10 .. and you will die.

so for the ones that complain games are too easy, ever consider seeing how high you can level using only lvl 1 gear ? Or no jewelry or armor at all or just gear 10 lvls below  your toons lvl ? All I am saying is no one is forcing you to wear that 'leet' raid gear.

 of course it is easier and cooler to jump on a forum and bittch about how  your skills are so great you are bored isn't it LOL

as far as I am concerned no MMO ever did require the skill like a good wargame or FPS, all it takes is a tremendous amount of time. Don't take much skill to grind mobs/raids till you get the drops you want

A more appropriate title would be "is the problem really that MMORPG's do not require the time investments they did years ago"

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by DrunkWolf

hard or easy isnt that just opinions that will be different with every person?  some people might think makeing mobs harder to kill by having us do less damage to them and having them do a little more damage to us makes that encounter harder. personally  i find that to be a cop out. harder to me would be makeing the challenge about knowledge of the situation. tactics on how to kill a mob not just swing my weapon 100 more times.

 

aim high? aim low? is the mob more vulnerable to fire? or maybe slashing? good thing i have multiple weapons. oh wait if this mob hits me twice with his magic im dead i better keep moving!  If i attack that mob im going to have his whole crew on me i better be carefull and only fight groups i can handle.  Damn if i die way out here in the middle of that mess of mobs im going to need help getting my body back i better be carefull.

 

Those are all things that i use to have to deal with in a older MMO. in todays MMOs i have my one weapon for every encounter no matter what. i stand there and just swing it a million times pressing some skills when they are off coodown. if i die who cares i just come back to this area in about 2 min ( because anything longer would be considered stupid and this game is dumb ).

 

There is no real threat from the mobs in games anymore, if we start off at level 1 and can actually die to a mob people would have a melt down on how lame that is. personally i would welcome the challenge from day one. tired of all the hand holding.

That is the whole point i was trying to make. That is why a difficulty slider is the solution.

There is a game you actually can die (very often i may add), at Level 1. Diablo 3. Set MP to 10 .. and you will die.

 how could you do this in a open world? only maybe in a instanced/zoned game, and arnt we all tired of that crap by now?

Originally posted by Ramonski7

Originally posted by ozmono

I wonder if people look at MMOs at a time when they enjoyed them better and start attributing the inevitable decline of interest with them on things like difficulty. Or in other words are people just wearing nostalgia glasses or is game difficulty really so much worse nowdays and as detrimental to current MMOs as some would have you believe?

I have an example for you to ponder for this oldest of questions. It's not about the games entirely it's about the players as well. Now I myself have come to this realization a while ago and I've made my peace with it. For as you surely cannot believe that a single player can enjoy all mmos, likewise a single mmo cannot be enjoyed by all players. Now on to my example:

 

We don't have the ignorance of youth anymore. Ask yourself this, 30 years ago if you could have one of two things: time or money what would you wish for? I think a majority would say money, I know I would have. What about right now? Money still? I bet it would be split. Now in 30 years from now if I asked you the same question again what would you wish for? I'd bet a majority would say time now. Unless somewhere down the road some realized early on that time is precious or someone else realized the good they could do with more money.

 

My main point is that our focus has changed along with the situations. This is why I say it's the players and the games to blame. What was your focus back then? Gear? Community? Power? Fame? Challenge? Like soldiers from our first tour of duty, some of us have an easier time than others adpating back to our civilian lives. So much so, that we can handle multiple tours and not miss a beat. Others are changed for life even after one tour and some poor souls seem to bring war wherever they go.

I was considering weighing in with my own opinion after finishing reading this thread until I read your post. I read a few post that made great points and even though some of them contradicted each other it was impossible to deduce an absolutely correct answer no matter how cautious I would approach the subject. Than I read your post and I agree. First of all it's a personal preference, second of all our preferences change and third of all hindsight isn't twenty twenty and neither is memory.

That said people who share my interest, interest me as do their opinions. :) I'd like to thank everyone who replied to this thread and gave their opinions, especially those who did so with care. I've read the whole thread and even though it took me longer than I anticipated, some of it was interesting and insightful. Cheers.

1. they arent hard

2. they lack innovation in the genre

3. they cater to people who wont stay long to play

4. they lack alot of world simulation that the old games used to have

Originally posted by VengeSunsoar

And yet the two biggest gamnes that arguably started the market (EQ and UO) were both developed if not wholly (As in UO) at least partially (as in EQ) by corporations.

UO was released in 1997 by Origin.  EA bought Origin in 1992

EQ was first thought up by 989 studios which was a division of Sony Computer Entertainment America.  Later a new company Verant was spun out in 1999 then later rejoined Sony in 2000.  So Sony had a hand in EQ from the very beginning. 

Games have really never been made by gamers for gamers (there are the one off ones that are). They have largely always been made by corporations making a product they feel will appeal to their particular audience.

The process has always been:  A particular developer had an idea and then sold it to a corporation that was willing to fund it.

SHHH! Your logic is not appreciated in the gamer's paradise!

Originally posted by Enigmatus

Originally posted by VengeSunsoar

And yet the two biggest gamnes that arguably started the market (EQ and UO) were both developed if not wholly (As in UO) at least partially (as in EQ) by corporations.

UO was released in 1997 by Origin.  EA bought Origin in 1992

EQ was first thought up by 989 studios which was a division of Sony Computer Entertainment America.  Later a new company Verant was spun out in 1999 then later rejoined Sony in 2000.  So Sony had a hand in EQ from the very beginning. 

Games have really never been made by gamers for gamers (there are the one off ones that are). They have largely always been made by corporations making a product they feel will appeal to their particular audience.

The process has always been:  A particular developer had an idea and then sold it to a corporation that was willing to fund it.

SHHH! Your logic is not appreciated in the gamer's paradise!

Hah! 

I feel like half the people on this website need to read this and stfu!

Originally posted by jadan2000

1. they arent hard

2. they lack innovation in the genre

3. they cater to people who wont stay long to play

4. they lack alot of world simulation that the old games used to have

 

^^^^ This for me. 

Also, some of Nariuss' ideas.  A difficulty slider in-game on an MMO would be cool. 

Imagine the starter zone set to mega hard, and then people forced to group together to do any of the quests.  It would solve a lot of the "We need more social aspects" problems people keep yelling for.  And solve "this is too easy" problem people keep yelling about.