Thread: Patch 2.2, Accessibility, Difficulty Levels, and Throwing Away Content

Originally Posted by Susanoh

Similar ideas to what I'm suggesting have already been done by other games, and they didn't crash and burn because players didn't get to bump their iLVLs up every six months to a year.

Would you list some? I'm kind of interested in what you define as a crash and burn.

Also don't you think a game with really good content which is gated and has power creep would be reasonably successful? I feel like you're making too much of an equivalency between the lack of two things you don't like and a game being good. You still need really good content and game management, which more often than not is the problem with these games.

I enjoyed Guild Wars because it lacked vertical progression. I could hit max level in two or three hours. But the different ways you could set up skills and stats kept me coming back. If you wanted to make a screwball build like a ritualist caster tank you could. Variation kept me interested. Progression should come from a player's mastery of the class rather than gear. This involves the ability to open each class to multiple play methods. It requires more action diversity. More cross class skills help this. Think Magic the Gathering deck building. There is a balance problem with this, however. Some combinations are too powerful. Other combos are weak.

The foundation for this is in the game. It just needs expanded.

Originally Posted by Xatsh

This games problem atm is not that it is new I keep see people say this... the games problem is the core philosophy of content progression we have. It is just a flawed model.

Actually it is a problem with the users who are gamblers. You know, those who enjoyed FFXI and old MMO design with kill the monster and get 5% chance at drops. These kind of people gladly do 10 hours of the same thing every single day, just because the chance is there. However remove the chance or have something without a reward, and they won't touch it, claiming "it is boring and pointless".

For all intents and purposes most of the people in this thread would enjoy poker more than a MMO. Because they like spending money on a challenge with a small chance at reward.

I am not denying some things could be better, but if the complaints are "I'm unmotivated to play because of the item progression", then you clearly are not enjoying the CONTENT at all.

Originally Posted by Malamasala

Actually it is a problem with the users who are gamblers. You know, those who enjoyed FFXI and old MMO design with kill the monster and get 5% chance at drops. These kind of people gladly do 10 hours of the same thing every single day, just because the chance is there. However remove the chance or have something without a reward, and they won't touch it, claiming "it is boring and pointless".

For all intents and purposes most of the people in this thread would enjoy poker more than a MMO. Because they like spending money on a challenge with a small chance at reward.

I am not denying some things could be better, but if the complaints are "I'm unmotivated to play because of the item progression", then you clearly are not enjoying the CONTENT at all.

Says the spoiled kiddies who have to have their new shinies right away or they throw a tantrum?

You need to realize of course that the reason most of us (it's a very, very tiny minority of folks who actually enjoyed the sadistic grind and absurdly low drop rates) stuck with XI for long was because it was a quality game, despite its many apparent flaws (was also the 1st MMO a lot of folks including myself ever played. I tried to like WoW and others but hated them all.)

You people need to stop generalizing XI players.

Yawn, another blah blah blah I want FFXI 2.0 horizontal progression thread.

An MMO of that nature wouldn't survive in todays market. I also want more difficult content because I'm all for content inaccessibility so I can lord my purples over the plebians in mor dhona though.

Without going into specific MMOs, it is difficult to talk about why certain MMORPGs crash. The biggest problem of the last decade was developers copying WoW's system down to the letter and trying to put a new coat of paint on it. SWTOR was a monumental project with a lot of hope behind it that turned into the colloquially named "Tortanic" due to every aspect of its gameplay being a direct WoW rip off. The real issue though, came after the release, where the developers blamed the quickly bleeding player base on a lack of end game content, when clearly many of the players were leaving before they even reached end game.

Because we have all played the same system for so long, people who regularly play contemporary MMORPGs know at some level the problems with these kinds of systems, probably even moreso than the people designing the games. One of those is the upwards progression associated with WoW. The thing is, you can make a game's content have lasting value, since every other genre of game does that. Someone who beats Skyrim will get the same satisfaction now that people who beat it back in 2011 did. Certainly they have fixed a ton of bugs and problems since then, but the experience is just polished, not permanently altered or changed. Not to mention they also add new stuff without irreversibly changing the old.

It also hurts the RPG elements of the game to constantly expand upwards. If a sword is supposed to be a relic of great power, why would it suddenly become irrelevant statistically in the story the second Leviathan is encountered? Must we ascend an endless ladder of supposedly priceless holy relics apparently each more powerful than the last for no explicable lore reason just to down a boss? MMORPGs already have enough story telling problems as is.

Originally Posted by Fendred

Without going into specific MMOs, it is difficult to talk about why certain MMORPGs crash. The biggest problem of the last decade was developers copying WoW's system down to the letter and trying to put a new coat of paint on it. SWTOR was a monumental project with a lot of hope behind it that turned into the colloquially named "Tortanic" due to every aspect of its gameplay being a direct WoW rip off. The real issue though, came after the release, where the developers blamed the quickly bleeding player base on a lack of end game content, when clearly many of the players were leaving before they even reached end game.

I'm not debating on the topic of "throw away content." However, the reasons for SWTOR's faults at launch were not as you say. I played on day one as a Bounty Hunter from 1-50 and while the leveling experience was a blast and a wonderfully written story, when you got to end game, there was almost little to nothing to do. Barely any content to keep a PvE player the least bit satisfied till the next major patch, and any dungeons we spammed led to conflict with the story within the dungeon we still had to endure each time and fighting over with others to take the dark or light route because people needed to get their Dark Side or Light Side leveled up. Having no Duty Finder system itself was unappealing to players who have been spoiled by other MMO's with it. PvP was horrifically unbalanced to the point that the opposing sides were literally helping each other stack up points through an exploit.

It wasn't because it was "a WoW clone," SWTOR simply did not offer the quality it promised and was plagued with issues to the point that people didn't care to stay on it and moved to the next MMO. Actually, the battle system and UI were probably the best mechanics of SWTOR's system. It was smooth, fast paced, fun and utilizing simple tasks were great with a UI that worked well. Even then, SWTOR is not a failure game, they are still pushing content out and still have a fairly sized fanbase to keep it up and running.