Too much dancing

[Sibyll]

snip

It's a different time. I admittedly did not play the older MMOs, but my guess would be that things like class strategy, boss mechanics and clever tricks were spread more so by word of mouth than by watching a youtube video of the top guilds doing the encounter. This really removes the fun of struggling through the encounter and learning as a group.

What you are saying about games leaning more towards graphics is something you could say about every genre today. I look at the Elder Scrolls series from Morrowind to Skyrim and I see a series that gets more and more graphically and physically impressive while they continue to flush mechanics, complexity and depth down the toilet, but I digress.

I think one of the major culprits of the high reward for low risk has been the introduction of "token" gear. It's just a bit more satisfying to finally get a drop than to meet the ETA on your next piece of token gear, except of course when the drop you are farming is gating you from progressing content.

[Trashy]

The problem with Chess in an MMO setting is that we aren't the players. We're the pieces. Chess is a great game, but I'd imagine it's pretty boring from the perspective of a pawn. Just like those older MMOs were fun for raid leaders and certain roles, but deadly boring for others. Ragnarok Online's PvP had incredible strategic depth and required coordination not only across a party, but among the entire alliance of sometimes 200 or so people, factoring in fights for control across 20 different castles. But sometimes I would play Gypsy and spend the entire two hours literally hitting one button.

Did you catch the part where Wizards wait until the boss is at 20% to nuke? No, you don't get to test your Halo or CoD PvP reflexes... you get to be part of a team in a very strategic role... and if you're selfish everyone dies.

I'm sorry, but sitting around doing nothing for 80% of the fight is maybe a "strategic role", but it's also incredibly boring.

[Estellios]

My only issue with dodging in this game is that Titan is extremely unforgiving. EX is almost entirely 1-shot moves and Weight of the Land is forced to be a 1-shot due to fight mechanics. If you are still learning the fight typically any deaths at all is probably grounds to just wipe and restart, which isn't very fun at all and a design philosophy that they hopefully will stay away from in the future.

Pretty much every other boss in the game doesn't really overuse dodging or depend on it for difficulty, IMO, so I have fun on most bosses.

[Simaril]

There's a whole other significant shift away from the social, sit back and relax games of the past towards the socially devoid duty finder fps/square dance.

I actually went on a vacation with my guild,... now you can just use DF, and don't even need to chat/talk.


Some of the 'advancements' of games have changed the experience... I'm not saying it's all bad, but it's come with tradeoffs. And right now it seems like too much of the focus has shifted towards dancing... because pretty much every other chalange that ever existed has been 'improved' so that it's no longer a challange.

Waiting for spawn timers was not fun, spending hours looking for a party was not fun, fighting world bosses and dealing with trolls or competing guilds was not fun... but all of those things introduced real challanges and obstacles that were incredibly rewarding to overcome. And meanwhile boss mechanics were interesting and challanging in entirely different ways than "move out of the red circle."

I don't want to go back 15 years, I'm just not that impressed with an overused and uninspired mechanic.

[HailZenberg]

I agree with the OP, (being an EQ player I reread the Vox strat with pleasure)

It's not just end game raid encounters, but the gameplay that has changed with some good and some bad:

- Mostly soloable content, good because you don't always have time to look for a group, but bad because you don't need others and have little interaction with other players.
- Simplified group content, with only 3 roles, auto party finder. Good as a time saver, but it removes the need to have a good reputation, and a lot of the social and tactical aspects.
- Very little downtime, good for many, but 'some' downtime favours socialising.
- No fear of death makes the game less rewarding and less immersive.
- No public dungeons, the drama of shared dungeons was epic but the atmosphere and immersion were unique!

All of this contributed to the genre gaining popularity. But there is room today for a more 'niche' MMO that will cater for a more 'EQ1' like experience, sans the huge time sinks it involved.

[LalaRu]

Simply put: too many encounters are extremely heavily focused on moving out of damage.

Simple answer: encounters focused on keep in place and pressing 111111121111121111114 are helluva much more boring.

[Simaril]

EQ raiding: You're at bat in game 7 of the world series, it's the bottom of the 9th with three runners on down by 3. (One meaningful attempt, that took a lot of effort to get to).
FFXIV raiding: Batting practice, with a pitching machine that shoots in a choreographed series of different directions with infinte balls. (Learn the sequence so you can stand in the right place to swing, it's okay of you screw up - you can just try again!).

Taken to extreme proportions:

Kerafyrm, The Sleeper (EverQuest)
Probably the hardest dragon boss of all time, as it had around 250 million health point, was invulnerable to nearly all spells and had the ability to use death touch (kill a player with one touch).With the average 6999 damage per swing, The Sleeper killed everything that came on its way. Whole fight took 3 hours to finish and was only possible thanks to quick resurrections. Interesting to know, is that with each death, EverQuest players lost experience points and de-leveled several times during the fight. Kerafyrm could only be awakened once on every server and he never respawned again.

[Sibyll]

EQ raiding: You're at bat in game 7 of the world series, it's the bottom of the 9th with three runners on down by 3. (One meaningful attempt, that took a lot of effort to get to).
FFXIV raiding: Batting practice, with a pitching machine that shoots in a choreographed series of different directions with infinte balls. (Learn the sequence so you can stand in the right place to swing, it's okay of you screw up - you can just try again!)....

Your biased analogies really aren't helping to prove your case. Don't get me wrong, you have some legitimate complaints; however, immunity to all spells and a massive hit point pool coupled with the ability to one shot anyone doesn't sound like a boss fight. Dying and getting resurrected repeatedly is the same strategy that the FATE zergs use against Gorgimera and the Eyes Have It, and calling this strategy is an insult the word.

[Ticklefairy]

Kerafyrm, The Sleeper (EverQuest)

Nope. Stop.

Kerafyrm wasn't a boss. Kerafyrm was a world event. SOE intended The Sleeper to be unkillable and did everything but make the thing literally unkillable. The proof is that SOE saw the guild alliance killing Kerafyrm and DESPAWNED the dragon because they thought that they were exploiting in order to accomplish it. After the uproar, SOE reset the event and let the guild alliance attempt it. After 3 hours of suiciding themselves at the dragon they finally killed it. Their reward? NOTHING.

The dragon didn't drop any loot. It had no loot table. Why? Because it wasn't a freaking boss. And it's "mechanics" were killing everyone one by one. Luckily it was expansions after The Sleeper was added, so they had better gear, and they had 200 people and could just toss bodies at it and rez 1000 times spamming Manaburn/Harmtouch and melee/pets until the thing finally died. Epic? Sure. Interesting mechanics? Absolutely not.

Not a good example.

[Simaril]

Ok... here's a more direct comparison-

FFXIV: lots of skill, minimal set-up effort, minimal risk
EQ: minimal skill, lots of set-up effort, lots of risk

My problem is the very limited set of "skill tests" we see (dance and spam).


I'm not sure either really requires much more or less strategy... you just read what someone else did... FFXIV does offer some randomness in encounters, EQ was a less controlled environment... and as you say a bit more like FATEs in that random people might show up, and the world around you was part of the encounter (instead of a locked room).