Are MMOs Too Easy?

[Deleted]

Over time we have seen the MMO genre take a gradual decrease in difficulty to the days we are at now. WoW is just one example of this, but in addition, games like Runescape, Maplestory, Ragnarok Online, etc etc have all had the similiar trend towards the following:

• Reducing the consequences of dying
• Gear upgrades easy to obtain
• Fast Leveling process
• Less socialising needed to progress content
• Leveling process nerfed

Do you think MMOs are too easy these days?

*snip*

This forum isn't for advertising your videos in. - Edge

[Deleted]

Go raid? Today's raids are a LOT harder than the ones from 15 years ago ...

[Deleted]

Go raid? Today's raids are a LOT harder than the ones from 15 years ago ...

so you are saying it's acceptable not to have any challenge until you reach level cap?

[Justpassing]

so you are saying it's acceptable not to have any challenge until you reach level cap?

I'm not saying it's acceptable - it IS acceptable as how things are now (not just WoW), and people are paying & playing.

[GutsAP]

Do people realize how retarded shit like EQ was back in the day? Camping stupid mobs for dozens upon dozens of hours or more for stupid epic quests and crap that somebody could just steal anyway? Or going into a dungeon and not being able to even play because all the camps were already taken.

MMOs today are vastly superior, thanks.

[Coldkil]

Difficulty comes in many ways. Also games and playerbase has changes quite a lot, not mentioning the game industry as a whole.

Simply put (because i would be writing an essay on this otherwise), games cater towards a way bigger playerbase than long time ago when artifical and arbitrary difficulty walls were perfectly acceptable and seen also as an objective and symbol of pride. We all were also way less skilled and there wasn't much better around to be honest, plus everything videogames related was niche at best.

Now videogames are of "public domain". Costs skyrocketed. Everything literally happened. Structure and feature went a long road of changes, expereimentation and streamlining - because the idea is that when someone wants to play game, he/she just wants to play it and have a fun time, not waste 3 hours to prepare for the actual fun activity. Most players are "casual" - meaning that they play shot-term sessions at very different times; there's no more the way to gather 40 or more people to do a raid and even less people is bound to follow a schedule anymore.

It's not a matter of being easy or hard. There's plenty of challenging content around. Long time sinks and dragging stuff around is not the synonym of a good game, nor about diffculty. It's just a chore most people don't care about.

[babyback]

No one would play a game like Everquest 1 today. The reason people accepted it back then was because it was new.

I think Wildstar is a prime example that going back to old routes of an mmo is a bad idea. It was labeled as a “hard mmo”

[dope_danny]

Difficulty was just put behind an instance door in most mmo's.

[Katchii]

Games back then weren't "hard" they were punishing and grindy. Games have evolved from that to provide a more friendly baseline experience that's less punishing, and provide more rewards for playing more rather than punishing people for playing less or making a mistake.

Actual difficulty, we have more challenging content now than we did back then. The main reason most raids in Vanilla WoW were "harder" is because it's a pain in the ass to coordinate 25+ people not because the actual fight was challenging.

[Kissintel]

At first, I was going to say that they were too easy, but after reading some of the replies I complete agree with what other people on the thread have been saying.

However, I will add that certain MMO's have lost a great deal of their sophistication over the years and that is something which has caused me to shy away from them. For example, branching character progression, unique gear (which have perks to character skills), death penalties, PvP composition complexity, and world traversal for events/questing.

[Aeula]

Not easy enough.

[Deleted]

This guy shilling shitty youtube crap thrice per day gets really old really fast.

[Softbottom]

I played EQ1 from 1999-2004 and it was punishing, grindy, and ridiculous. Was it fun and awesome? Of course. At the time it was really the only mmo available and it required you to play with other people in order to do anything. Grouping and grinding mobs, going to "dungeons" and having to camp check, raids just being logistical nightmares in terms of numbers. MMO's have evolved; If a company tried to release something that played like EQ1 today it would fail miserably.

[Lotus Victoria]

My favourite expansion ever to an MMO (Heart of Thorns, from GW2) was/is hard as shit. You can't complete most stuff alone, and I like that. People run group stuff daily, and that's awesome.

Path of Fire, on the other hand, is too easy, and maps are empty 1 month after release.

Harder, daddy!

[Ornerybear]

I mean, EQ was a difficult mmo, it was killed off by WOW...wow was incredibly easy and fast to level in compared to the standard back then. wow in my oppinion is solely responsible for shifting mmos into the realm of easy and fast. In many ways, while it's quicker to lvl in wow now, byt the end game of wow now is more difficult than it was with added mechanics and mythic difficulty. Also this is not a post meant to critique wow. I loved eq back in the day when vanilla came out and did not enjoy vanilla as much because it wasn't a challenge for someone who'd been playing eq for 5 years. I enjoyed wow more and more over the years.

[Linri]

depends on the mmo
but most are quite easy but they are meant to "guide" your hand into the content, which is always nice, but never truly "hard"

hard mmos, where you need certain gear are really just time based stuff... play enough = get good.. thats the mmo way!

[barackopala]

My favourite expansion ever to an MMO (Heart of Thorns, from GW2) was/is hard as shit. You can't complete most stuff alone, and I like that. People run group stuff daily, and that's awesome.

Path of Fire, on the other hand, is too easy, and maps are empty 1 month after release.

Harder, daddy!

its not about it being easier, its due to low replayability.

About older mmo's, it wasnt about them having HARD content, it was about them being punishing.

[Kazgrel]

Too easy? Nah, there's things like WoW's mythic raids and fights like FF14's Ultimate Bahamut, to name a couple of examples.

MMOs now are far less tedious, though.

[Requimortem]

No. The issue is that we have add-ons doing most of the work. While browsing videos to get an idea of how to complete the Mage Tower Challenge in World of Warcraft, I noticed that people were using add-ons that basically told them what to hit, when to cast their spells, when/what to interrupt, etc. It's not necessarily botting but it's close enough and ultimately because of it the videos were useless to me. Take away these add-ons (and macros too) and you'll find that the game is still quite difficult. In Final Fantasy XIV's case an easy way to take care of that is to not have them telegraph their attack five minutes in advance. Also, easy leveling does not mean a game is easy, it means the developers realizes tedious grinding isn't fun.

[Halicia]

Also, easy leveling does not mean a game is easy, it means the developers realizes tedious grinding isn't fun.

Pfft...some of the most fun I've had in MMOs was just flipping on some music, grabbing a drink... and doing "tedious grinding" for an hour or two.