Going to the same route as WoW. The game is TOO easy

[Varyntheos]

As one of those dirty “hardcore gamers,” let me tell you I had zero interest in Wildstar, ever.

All of their advertising about being oh-so-hardcore was “telegraphs, Telegraphs, TELEGRAPHS!!!!!!!111111one”

That doesn’t sound like a hardcore MMORPG to me at all. That sounds like a bullet hell game. That’s fine, those can be fun. But I’m not interested in sinking thousands of hours into one (especially one with a hamfisted furry aesthetic for some reason).

So I really don’t agree with the trotting out of Wildstar as a reason why a difficult game can’t be well-received. There are a lot of other reasons it doesn’t appeal to MMORPG players.

First off I have nothing against being hardcore, I was in my younger gaming days before I was Married with 3 kids lol. My point was though Wildstar was made specifically to cater to that crowd. They did not even hide that fact.

[Adrestia]

There is a roulette to pad out queue times. Has nothing to do with difficulty. Also reminder that this mindset just leads to the usual complaints of "Playing as Y'shtola or Hien in a single fight, with only 4 buttons to press, is too hard."

I’ve gotta disagree with you here. Roulettes necessarily dictate game design and difficulty. If a system is going to randomly matchmake for you, then dungeons can only expect so much teamwork and skill. And because the expectation of these roulettes is that most players will run them daily, the expected clear rate in a completely random group has to be very, very high.

The original expert dungeons in RIFT and the TBC-era heroics in WoW are examples of the difficulty you see when developers are free to consider communication and coordination as core requirements. They’re very, veeerrrryyuy different from what we see today, and that’s in large part because clearing regularly involved an organized group or at least “selective pugging” like party finder.

[Adrestia]

First off I have nothing against being hardcore, I was in my younger gaming days before I was Married with 3 kids lol. My point was though Wildstar was made specifically to cater to that crowd. They did not even hide that fact.

But they didn’t cater to the hardcore MMORPG crowd, because they didn’t really make an MMORPG. That was my point. If they proved anything, it’s that there’s a limited market for MMO bullet hells.

There’s honestly very little in the “hardcore MMORPG” space. Investors generally aren’t willing to put their money behind it, and when they do, the risk is very high. We don’t know if Curt Schilling’s game would have been a commercial success, because it was terribly mismanaged and failed to even release. We don’t know if World of Darkness Online would have been a commercial success for the same reasons. Pantheon TBD.

There’s also a pretty hard crossover between the desires of older hardcore MMORPG players and persistent virtual worlds as opposed to theme parks. If a game is going to be that demanding of me, I want it to be something I can sink my time into. It shouldn’t just have hard raids. It should have content that feels meaningful 24/7, and I can decide how often I want to dive into it.

Whether it’s WoW or FFXIV or Wildstar, most of the time is spent on mindless fetch quests and AoEing down hallways that may as well not have mechanics. “Dailies” and duty finder type content score very high on “player engagement” which is a metric that publishers weigh heavily. But how fun is it really doing your 27th day of the same beast tribe dailies you’ve been doing for the past month, or AoEing down the same hallways with 3 other players who may as well be bots for all the game expects you to interact with them? If you’re okay requiring Netflix on a second monitor to have fun while you do this grind, great. But if you want the game itself to be your entertainment, this model falls flat really fast. I may do it for as long as I still need tomestones so I can do actual engaging content, but that doesn’t mean I’m happy about it.

[NekoNova]

I remember a game that was made to cater to the hardcore group it was called Wildstar, what happened to that game? I have seen this topic for years and at the end of the day to keep the game alive you have to keep some points easy, this is why they have savage here, mythic in wow, etc. As someone who has played Wow since beta and just recently stopped, I definitely prefer this game.

Wildstar failed cause of the management, cause it had some amazing stuff in it, and not because it "hardcore"
Damn shame what happened to that game.

[SerLuke]

tbh I'm fine with the way things are, and it seems most people that play the game are too as FFXIV's sub numbers keep going up, unlike WoW's(which is proof this game is NOT going the same route as WoW). I think what people need to realize is this is not WoW, while both may be MMORPGs this game is meant to appeal to a different audience(JRPG fans vs WRPGs) JRPGs aren't known for being particularly difficult outside of stuff like DarkSouls and even then this game has difficult content for those that want in in the form of Savage/Ultimate.

[Cayalle]

Since the beginning of the game I have come to admire his difficulty. Whether it's in quest (Of course some some npc heals you so you do not crash, but still it's hard ... It's not like other games that you just get gives two to five attacks and it's over.) Dungeons are amazing, raid's Full of mechanics and things that the whole group should do ... It's good to fail, to see people communicating by seeing what they can and can not do to get through that obstacle. It is wrong to think that after doing something for the first time the difficulty will remain the same ... I think many people do not understand this. The real difficulty is your first going on anything ... After this you are already aware of what will happen and whether or not you already know what to do. And it's a horror to compare this game with WOW.

[hasana]

The reason WoW is bad right now is because they are following this formula

Do your chore, get the shiny and then come back tomorrow.

So, no, FFXIV doesn't behave like that.

[Edax]

The reason WoW is bad right now is because they are following this formula

Do your chore, get the shiny and then come back tomorrow.

So, no, FFXIV doesn't behave like that.

The reason for WoW's quality might just be a little more complicated then you're making it out to be.

[hasana]

The reason for WoW's quality might just be a little more complicated then you're making it out to be.

Well one of the biggest reason is Blizzard making the game around metrics such as playtime and not fun, engaging.

But that World quest situation is clearly the best exemple of that kind of mentality.

So of course it is not the only reason people quit the game but clearly is what drive most players.

[AxlStream]

And you guys think yoshi and crew don't look at metrics? We'll talk once Eureka comes back, again, even though it's the worst piece of "content" people have ever seen in an MMO.