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

[Edax]

I guess "never" is a potential unit of time.

"(Thursday 11th September 2008) The Guinness Book of World Records has recognized RuneScape as the world's largest free massively multiplayer online role-playing game. In addition to being the world's largest free MMO, the game is also the second largest MMO in the world, according to developer Jagex, with over one million paying subscribers and five million players taking advantage of the free game." -
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...st-free-mmorpg

[linay]

Runescape isn't "very niche". What exactly is the rule for an MMO to be mainstream?

It's not just about the number, but also familiarity/recognizability/acknowledgement within society. There could be games with more players in China, it still won't make them mainstream to people living in the US.

From my experience, I've heard of WoW and FFXIV (and FFXI before that) long before I ever played any MMORPG. I've never heard of Runescape until I play MMORPG and started talking to other people playing MMORPG.

So, I'm not saying Runescape isn't mainstream, because obviously my experience is anecdotal. But if there are many more people like me today (not whenever Runescape was more popular) who has never heard of it, then it could be considered niche or not mainstream within the general public in certain parts of the world even if it may actually have a lot of players.

[Melichoir]

Runescape isn't "very niche". What exactly is the rule for an MMO to be mainstream? How many active players make it "count"? For a time it was the most famous MMORPG of all time, being the gateway MMO for most MMORPG players. FFXIV only has 668,550 active characters (https://ffxivcensus.com/), while Runescape has 1 million active subscribers (https://www.bleedingcool.com/2019/01...n-subscribers/).

Mainstream MMOs are more widely recognized and are more involved in the current dialogue when discussing MMOs (and games at large). This means MMOs can move in and out of mainstream depending their relevance to the game culture at the time. Runescape is not mainstream by this criteria. While a classic MMO, it is not a leader in MMOs, nor is it part of the mainstream discussion typically for a lot of reasons (graphics, gameplay, story, features, etc). This doesnt mean people cant enjoy it. I enjoy things like RO, which is old and terrible by all standard means and still has a 'large' enough player count, but it is not mainstream.

Furthermore, while that article says 1 million subscribers, I would need clarity as to what it counts as subscribers, as the article does not seem to mention differences between memberships and F2P members. This is important because if the Runescape model is F2P with people opting in for membership programs with perks, it will naturally have higher player counts because the gate of entry is that low. This gets more complicated because you can play the game still after ending membership. So does that 1 million subscriber count (if it only counts memberships) mean continuously active ones, or does it include any account who had at some period of time for any length a membership. You would see much larger numbers for FFXIV if it had a baseline F2P model with a membership program. Furthermore, that article seems to also suggest that 1 million count is not from the mobile app alone but all iterations of runescape, so this doesnt give us a 1:1 comparison. There's a lot of variables to the article that dont exactly make it clear how it's reaching that 1 million number. This is a problem when comparing the two because FFXIV hits a 600k subscriber count with ACTIVE accounts, meaning that people are actually paying to play the game in the current moment, where the article does not illustrate whether thats the case or not, or if its just 1 million active accounts, which are easier to achieve with it being f2p, which also means defining active. With FFXIV, Active subscriptions = actual players playing the game. Where an active sub in an F2P could literally mean someone logging in once or twice a year for a few days.

Runescape's setup of auto-attacks proved more popular then when it implemented a hotbar and skills.

Again, proved popular to who? The game industry at large, or within its own player base? If were gonna get into niche examples that are harder to compare 1:1, then I can say simply by the fact that most mainstream MMOs (or MMOs in general) rely on multiskill combat, and thats where most players who play MMO are, the 1 button combat system is not popular across MMO players at large.

If you want to say 1 button combat is popular among Runescape players, then what needs to be discussed is how that relates to FFXIV. The one button system might be just fine (and more popular) in Runescape due to other factors within the game. You may not need a complex skill system if other factors come into play that make the game rewarding and challenging (unless Runescape is quite literally just a fancy chatroom at this point, then its more of a social tool than MMO, but thats another discussion). The one button combat system doesnt work for FFXIV because the game isnt designed for it, and switching over to said system would more than likely cause a player base crash, not be a boon to its numbers. This is why in the context of more Mainstream and Modern MMOs, they dont rely on a 1 or two button system. They rely on more advanced combat systems that engage players more. Ill put it this way: If 1 or two button combat was that desired, most MMOs would have this set up. They dont, however. This isnt a 'cause its trendy' thing, but more a 'this is what most players gravitate towards. This is where the market demand is at.

"(Thursday 11th September 2008) The Guinness Book of World Records has recognized RuneScape as the world's largest free massively multiplayer online role-playing game. In addition to being the world's largest free MMO, the game is also the second largest MMO in the world, according to developer Jagex, with over one million paying subscribers and five million players taking advantage of the free game." -
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...st-free-mmorpg

That article from 2008 hurts your earlier article you linked. If they have 1 mil in 2008 with what seems to be 1 game, and have 1 million in 2018 across all platforms, that means their player base is spread and is suffering a loss in players to the specific game.

[Ronduwil]

Doing respectable DPS for anything short of Ultimate raids really does not require significant time devotion. At all. The people who can't do respectable DPS are either afk or only using one spell or only auto attacking or something equally as troll worthy. It would be really nice to weed out these players early, which improves the game for everyone.

I'm in no position to speak to how raiding is in this game, but in my WoW experience, rotation isn't the issue for beating the raid timer. The issue is maintaining your rotation while also dealing with boss mechanics. Also, respectable DPS isn't enough to take down WoW bosses on the Heroic/Mythic level. Everyone's execution has to be flawless. That means everyone pops their cool downs at key times, no one falls prey to an instant-kill mechanic, and everyone's latency is spot on. As for weeding out players improving the game for everyone, I completely disagree. Weeding out players is a good way to kill your game. This is why this game's sub numbers are on the rise while WoW's are still in decline. They were extremely successful at weeding out their reasonable players. Now all that's left are ultra casual collectors and hardcore raiders with no game to speak of in between those two extremes.

To be clear, I'm not saying that hard content and challenges shouldn't exist for the hardcore. I'm just saying that they shouldn't come at the expense of widely accessible content. The title of the thread is flawed because WoW isn't really easy. The problem is that there's super-casual content and extremely hardcore content with nothing in between. The super hard content is still there for those that want it. The problem isn't that the super easy content exists. Super easy content always existed. The difference now is that there are no incentives to do the mid-level group content because you can't get anything out of it that you couldn't get faster out of the super easy solo content. While I agree that the WoW model should be emulated, I don't agree that WoW is "too easy." It just doesn't offer compelling mid-level group content. As long as this game continues to provide that, I think it'll be fine.

[Edax]

Again, proved popular to who? The game industry at large, or within its own player base? If were gonna get into niche examples that are harder to compare 1:1, then I can say simply by the fact that most mainstream MMOs (or MMOs in general) rely on multiskill combat, and thats where most players who play MMO are, the 1 button combat system is not popular across MMO players at large.

To itself. Runescape 3 added a hotbar and a bunch of skills, which so fundamentally changed the game that the players demanded the old game's one-click system return. So eventually they uploaded a saved copy of the game from 2004 and called it Old School Runescape, which eventually garnered so much support, it's playerbase eclipsed Runescape 3, despite that one having better graphics and a larger team working on it.

However, if you created to much division between the best players and the average player, yeah thats gonna create problems. But, if you drop the skill floor out completely, youll end up killing your MMO as well. You cant have it so casual that most game content can be completed by literally pushing 2 skill buttons. Here's the rub: You have to find a balance with the average player that they CAN make the leap to Savage and Ultimate stuff with invested effort, while at the same time making sure those tiers are tough for the people who want it tough. This usually means raising the skill floor, not dropping it, on average players over time. The higher level they get, their skill should increase. Not just get stronger simply because they have better stats/gear.

That article from 2008 hurts your earlier article you linked. If they have 1 mil in 2008 with what seems to be 1 game, and have 1 million in 2018 across all platforms, that means their player base is spread and is suffering a loss in players to the specific game.

No it doesn't. You said an MMO couldn't just have 2 buttons, but that wasn't true. You said Runescape was too niche to count, so I asked how many players it needed to have to "count" and you didn't provide one. Looking at the player growth curve over 12 years is a complete distraction from your mistaken point. The fact I had to reach for the Guiness Book of World Records should be enough to point out the Runescape is not obscure of "very niche". You can have it so casual that most game content can be completed by literally pushing 2 skill buttons.

So all this is built on a false premise:

The issue with balancing 'down' is that it is leads to a self feedback loop. Make content easy, average players think that is the average, creates a larger and larger gulf between the hardcore players and the average players, which obviously fuels resentment. This gets worse because average players stop feeling like they can realistically bridge that gap, and when devs try to implement more difficult content, players whove been trained on the easy mode cant cut it effectively and complain its to hard. This usually results in it being made easier which lowers the quality of play on average players, thus creating a larger gap and preventing harder mechanics.

[Ayer2015]

IDK if this will be popular here, but just a quick glance at the front page of general discussion shows how far away from the original idea XIV has gone.

There is virtually no challenge outside of savage raids. There is little community aspect since everything is instanced, and people are far more concerned with minions and mounts that discussing battle startegies, since none is required.

I'm pretty old now I guess. I came up on EQ, played XI for 5 years and started XIV on 1.0. I played XIV now on and off. I resubbed this month with the expansion hype, but leveling my AST I found myself asking why. I mean, healing is no challenge what so ever. I'm mostly spamming my DD spells.

This is just venting, i suppose, but after seeing a lot of WoW refugee threads and videos I couldn't help but thinking XIV is heading in the same direction.

I, myself, will probably buckle and get the expansion, but I will 100% be playing Classic in Aug. and Pantheon whenever that comes out.

TLDR: The challenge is gone and with it the community.

You may find it hard to believe, but some people dont enjoy discussing battle strategies and just want to chill with friends while playing a game.

[Straynge]

Isn't challenging my @#$. You know how long it took me to breed my freaking racing chocobo? Then I totally messed it up so I didn't get a perfect chocobo and I'm way to lazy to do all that again. /ragequits. Actually my non perfect chobo wins like 9 out of 10 races so I figured it was doing just fine. Still....took a while to get that chocobo to the end. Oh, you're talking about combat. Go chocobo racing then. All joking aside there's lots of things to do, lots of choices from easy to hard. I would rather have lots of choices than be shoe horned into elite mode just to run dailies and stuff.

[Millybonk]

Shadowbringers is mostly as I expected it to be:

• Homogenization + loss of customization/identity: for the short while I played Gunbreaker I barely noticed I played a new class, as the core is the same as every other tank, with a few deviations here and there, which already for me reduced the class to "Just level via roulette to see the class story once".
  Or SCH who still has both pets, but both do the exact same thing, and I lost Selene's small buff potential in the process, as now everything is reduced to Eos's "heal, barrier, mitigate" playstyle.
• Lowest common denominator scope: as I switched through my classes I lost quite a few abilities.
  Tanks got reduced to a single builder rotation, with PLD and WAR having a tiny deviation in a single ability you can press instead at the end of your core rotation.
  There are now a few off-GCDs, but with everything more streamlined I have even less buttons to press once my off-GCDs are on CD.

[NebulaStarsong]

Yoshi stated he didn't want it to consume people's lives as well. People have jobs, kids, school, ect.
~I pressed reply with quote and guess it didn't get the quoted person...~

[Dubont]

OP is so elitist that he wants to show off just how little meaning his life holds outside of this game. Not everyone has such free time that they can sit at their computer for 20hrs a day, 7 days a week, trying to master a boss battle just to progress through the story. When it comes to actual hard content, sure, I'll read up on the fight and perfect my 3 button presses that any game requires. Other than that, a game for adults that have lives should not consume 90% of your daily life.

tl;dr: I have a 79 hr a week job with a family and a house I have to maintain. If I have to spend more time on a game that I do taking care of my family, just to play the game...it's not a good game for anyone out of high school.