Current State of End-Game Contents - A Blog Post from A Japanese Player

[Zantetsuken]

ARR follows WoW's model almost exactly. It is accessible, in the early levels, everything is charted out and spoon fed to you in rapid succession. When you finally get to endgame, it layers on difficulty by being punishing if you don't follow the exact scripted steps that the game designers intend for you to take.

I think the following sums up what is wrong with this model, from one of the people who designed it:

Former Blizzard developer Mark Kern says that MMOs are now too easy and that World of Warcraft “ruined a genre”.

In a post on MMORPG, Kern – who left Blizzard to found Red 5 Studios – lamented the drive towards accessibility that he believes has turned most MMOs into indistinct and unchallenging races to their respective end games.

“Accessibility was the mantra when I was leading the World of Warcraft team,” he wrote.

This accessibility meant that players never had to think about what to do next, wrote Kern, and expansions hastened the simplification of the game.

“Quest trackers were added, and xp was increased so that it was easier to level through all the old content to get to the ‘new stuff’ of the expansion,” he wrote.

“Gear from the a new expansions first quests made raid gear from previous expansions a joke. And the level curve became faster and faster until we reached a point where everyone is just in a race to get to max level, and damn everything else in between.

“Why care about level 20 gear when you would blow by levels so fast it was obsolete before you even logged off for the night?” he asked.

But the accessibility push worked, and players arrived in their millions. However, Kern questioned whether it was actually worth it.

“Sometimes I look at WoW and think ‘What have we done?’,” he wrote.

“I think I know. I think we killed a genre.”

The lowering of the game’s difficulty curve was a particular problem as it robbed players of a sense of achievement, said Kern.

“When the bar is lowered so that everyone can reach max level quickly, it makes getting to max level the only sense of accomplishment in the game,” he wrote.

“We lose the whole journey in between, a journey that is supposed to feel fun and rewarding on its own. Nobody stops to admire a beautiful zone or listen to story or lore, because there is no time to do so.

“You are fed from a fire-hose of quests that you feel compelled to blaze through, whose content is so easy and quick to accomplish, that you are never in one place long enough to appreciate the incredible world around you.

“We feel bored by these quests, simply watching numbers on our quest trackers count down to completion before we are fed the next line of quests. And you don’t feel satisfied from playing the game because it never challenged you.”

In turn, this meant that developers didn’t spend time creating rich, fulfilling quests, but instead repeated the same simple generic template over and over, said Kern.

“The moment to moment gameplay suffers. And its this focus on throwaway quests as ‘content’ that is putting MMOs into a very deep bind,” he wrote.

“There is no thinking, and not much choice, as the ideal path is spoon fed to you in a linear fashion (ironic how open world MMOs have become linear quest fests).

“It may be great for relaxing and having a fun couple hours of gameplay, but it doesn’t last. No wonder we have such a huge crowd of jaded and bored MMO players.”

The focus of such games should be on the journey, added Kern.

“An MMO should be savored, a lifetime of experiences contained within a single, beautifully crafted world. The moment to moment gameplay should be its own reward.

“It’s not about the competition to max out your character, it’s about a way of life and a long term hobby with enduring friends.”

ARR tries to artificially infuse challenge and longevity into this model by implementing punishing group memorization tests.

But the flaws in cloning WoW are fundamental, and simply making Titan EX or T5 easier won't fix them.

The game needs challenge... REAL challenge based on DEPTH (meaningful decision making) rather than mere EXECUTION (group jump-rope)

[Rosy]

ARR follows WoW's model almost exactly. It is accessible, in the early levels, everything is charted out and spoon fed to you in rapid succession. When you finally get to endgame, it layers on difficulty by being punishing if you don't follow the exact scripted steps that the game designers intend for you to take.

I think the following sums up what is wrong with this model, from one of the people who designed it:



ARR tries to artificially infuse challenge and longevity into this model by implementing punishing group memorization tests.

But the flaws in cloning WoW are fundamental, and simply making Titan EX or T5 easier won't fix them.

The game needs challenge... REAL challenge based on DEPTH (meaningful decision making) rather than mere EXECUTION (group jump-rope)

Once again another "hit the nail on the head" moment. It used to take AGES to get one single level in games like EQ, in fact "ding" was often announced in general chat accompanied by many congrats, even if it was level 2!! I remember the run from my home town to Kaladim...it was SCARY, my adrenaline actually kicked in. I've never, ever had those moments in mmos since then.

The times I lost my body before it rotted in those early days of levelling up and had to go kill skeletons again to just get some ragged cloth items to wear. Yeah it was FUN, challenging right from the beginning to the very end. Grindy? yup, but for some reason we didn't seem to mind back then....and you could lose levels! yeah...go afk somewhere and you could come back finding yourself delevelled maybe 10 levels, if you weren't careful where you were.

Nice to see a developer asknowledge the fact that WoW ruined the mmorpg genre, and a shame that modern games try to emulate wow. Although there is one coming out that has gone back to basics...sure hope they don't change anything, as it is pure sandbox and looks awesome. Looking forward to the hours of training my skills (lockpicking/provoking in UO anyone?)

[Grizzlebeard]

I also remember the corpse runs in EQ....going to bed when the birds were up and singing because it had taken me two hours to drag all the corpses to the entrance for guildies to recover theirs the next day PLANE OF FEAR!! It was teamwork at its very best, where you could actually play with guildies (instead of this stupid "static" idea), where players who weren't good at dodging...not that there was much dodging back then, still had skills to assist their team.

Where we had to actually beat other guilds to even get a boss! and hope we didn't see them rushing past us as we were clearing...but of course that was in the days before "instances" and the sterile atmosphere that brings with it.

I want to hug you right now.

Fear and Hate break-ins are some of my most enduring memories from EQ. Entering in to those zones the player actually felt a sense of nervous dread and exhilaration. It's been a long time since I've felt that in an MMO and certainly at no point in FFXIV have I felt anything approaching the level of excitement I experienced even just exploring zones like Chardok with friends. The dungeons in FFXIV are instanced and bland, they may look pretty but we're on rails... there's no way to explore like you could in FFXI. I remember wandering around Sea Serpent Grotto for hours learning the lay of the land so I could get to Charybdis with my eyes closed or take newbies on their ninja scroll runs.

This game lacks any real sense of wonder or danger for me sadly and judging by people's responses across a number of forums many people feel the same. Can an expansion fix the inherent design ethos with this game? I personally don't think it can.

[TheUltimate3]

Could a EQ game even survive anymore?

Serious question and I know the term "survive" is a loaded one because in theory a game could survive just fine with 100,000 players if it was cost effective.

But can a MMO survive the budget required to make them nowadays on the EQ model. I've skimmed this thread for a few days and people bring up the MMOs of old, but could those MMOs of old survive this new era of the genre, or is everyone just thinking wistfully of the past?

[gornotck]

Could a EQ game even survive anymore?

Serious question and I know the term "survive" is a loaded one because in theory a game could survive just fine with 100,000 players if it was cost effective.

But can a MMO survive the budget required to make them nowadays on the EQ model. I've skimmed this thread for a few days and people bring up the MMOs of old, but could those MMOs of old survive this new era of the genre, or is everyone just thinking wistfully of the past?

Everquest and Everquest 2 both survive to this day, sort of. So I believe the answer is 'yes', but it won't attract the same toxic people as so-called Current Generation MMOs do. Entirely different toxic culture, with entirely different toxic goals.
What I find interesting about this debacle thread is that no one, or almost no one, has even suggested things like skill chains and the Battle Regime systems or other player-based methods of combatting and disabling enemies.
They just boil it down to mechanics versus gear, then throw around buzzwords and act as if everything is perfect forever, or would be perfect forever if they'd only just listen to reason (of which none existed).
You absolutely should be able to put together a group of random people through duty finder or party finder and have a reasonable expectation of success. You absolutely should be able to get through if most people know how to play their job, not their boss. You absolutely should be able to over gear for a fight as it gets older, making it quantifiably easier in every way.

You absolutely should be talking and communicating with your party and not treating them as accessories to your murder.

[Iriadysa]

You know what's the most recurring fallacy in this thread? This:

"You have to memorize rotations! Memorizing is not difficulty".

Nope, you all are wrong. You don't have to memorize anything at all. In fact, the game is so soft on everyone that it allows you to either react or memorize.

The more I read this thread the more I'm convinced about my opinions on the ones defending this shitty concept. Which, btw, you aren't as many as you believe you are. Page after page it's the same 4 or 5 faces repeating the same arguments and ignoring the actual crux of the problem, which I quote from 7 pages back (and which I have brought numerous times as well, always to be completely ignored):

Was reading back and picked up on this, I think it's a good opportunity to summarize the concepts at work here again.

First of all, it depends what you mean by "overgear content". It's already true that the content in this game becomes much easier with item level increases, so it's already possible to reduce difficulty by overgearing the content. So when people say they want to be more able to overgear content, the implication is that they want to be able to circumvent the challenge of a fight with gear (think killing Demon Wall before the hornets could spawn, back when they still did). Then, in the same breath, they say they want fights with more depth, more fun, more interaction, and more random play. To this I say, which is it? So far, no proposed solution addresses both of these desires. In fact, as far as I can tell every solution makes one of these problems or the other even worse.

The most popular suggestion is making fights "random". For one, this only creates the illusion of choice compared to the "scripted" battles we have now. You'll still react the same way to the same attack, you'll just be doing it in a different order. Additionally, this will make the battles harder for people who can't dodge/react to the current system where you literally know what is coming next. The only way to avoid this is to make failure less "punishing", and this is tied to the idea that gear should be the primary determining factor in victory. Now, you don't have to dodge. Just heal through it and do whatever you want. Suddenly, no depth, no challenge, no fun, no better off than we were before, just different for the sake of being different.

People have come up with some very creative ways to randomize fights. In my opinion, none of them actually solve the proposition of the OP and the competing interests of the different groups of players.

The OP also wants to reintroduce attempt lock-outs on content as opposed to the clear lock-outs we now have. While this may free up the developers to make battles less mechanics driven as the OP suggests, there are two issues. 1. People complain about attempt lock-outs just as much as they do about clear lock-outs. 2. Attempt lock-out systems worked because loot followed the rare drop system rather than our guaranteed drop system. This is another one of those ugly unintended consequences I keep bringing up.

Do you see now why it's not so simple? This idea of "Let me overgear content and let me do it NAO!" would solve one problem (casuals feeling left out). But it would also completely ignore another problem (recognizing player skill) while making yet another one worse (these battles are no fun).

Address that or stop crying, because in the end that's really what you are all doing when you decide to not answer this argument.

ARR follows WoW's model almost exactly. It is accessible, in the early levels, everything is charted out and spoon fed to you in rapid succession. When you finally get to endgame, it layers on difficulty by being punishing if you don't follow the exact scripted steps that the game designers intend for you to take.

I think the following sums up what is wrong with this model, from one of the people who designed it:



ARR tries to artificially infuse challenge and longevity into this model by implementing punishing group memorization tests.

But the flaws in cloning WoW are fundamental, and simply making Titan EX or T5 easier won't fix them.

The game needs challenge... REAL challenge based on DEPTH (meaningful decision making) rather than mere EXECUTION (group jump-rope)

We can agree with the quoted WoW text. And I wish people understood that the worshiped OP does not advocate for this. Whoever thinks it does has not understood anything.
You, however, are performing a brutal fallacious trick here: the quoted text has nothing to do with your conclusion.

I recommend a career in politics if you are not already considering it.

[Grizzlebeard]

Address that or stop crying, because in the end that's really what you are all doing when you decide to not answer this argument.

There's nothing to address. There should be no requirement for old content to remain current. If you overgear something so significantly then you've clearly already earned your spurs and shouldn't have to keep jumping through the same instagib hoops such as Landslide.

[Clavaat]

-snip-

The big difference: You were all of those characters at once.

You didn't have to make a plan and make sure everyone knew what to do. You knew the plan already, you knew what you had to do already. That's how you played the game. What if someone from Tanzania didn't know the plan and died? That's ok, because you that person didn't affect your game. This is an MMO. It isn't your game or Bob from Tanzania's game. It's our game. We work together. That's the challenge.

Memorizing mechanics will not win you a fight. Being coordinated, and knowing what to do when things don't always go by the plan will win you a fight. That takes leadership and coordination on top of understanding your Job and what role it fills and how to do it to the best of your ability for all scenario. Your Party becomes more important, because you have to know them, and know what the individual's strengths and weaknesses are. And, despite what you may think, you can recover from a lot of scenarios with a simple backup plan.

[Velhart]

Could a EQ game even survive anymore?

Serious question and I know the term "survive" is a loaded one because in theory a game could survive just fine with 100,000 players if it was cost effective.

But can a MMO survive the budget required to make them nowadays on the EQ model. I've skimmed this thread for a few days and people bring up the MMOs of old, but could those MMOs of old survive this new era of the genre, or is everyone just thinking wistfully of the past?

Its not to say a game couldn't succeed using EQ as inspiration for their game play. With how MMO's are today, if you are a developer making that game, you kind of have to take with a grain of salt that this particular taste in game play you are only going to have a niche community, which will likely compose mostly of hardcore MMO vets looking for a familiar experience with the past. You are definitely not appealing to a large scale. So you have to make a budget and a sub/F2P system that is very well built and makes sense. Investors usually don't want to put money into that type of game unless it is a more known IP. Basically don't have high expectations unless the developers found a way to keep it traditional and revolutionize the aspect, which is doubtful.

[Kuwagami]

Memorizing mechanics will not win you a fight. Being coordinated, and knowing what to do when things don't always go by the plan will win you a fight. That takes leadership and coordination on top of understanding your Job and what role it fills and how to do it to the best of your ability for all scenario. Your Party becomes more important, because you have to know them, and know what the individual's strengths and weaknesses are.

that would mean that PUGs have no chance to ever win a high-end fight. Memorization plays a huge part, you can't ignore it


Edit :

I beg to differ. If the people in said PUG have a designated leader, or actually communicate politely and effectively, they still have a possibility of winning. This is much more difficult to come to terms on with a PUG, but it is possible nonetheless. Essentially that would come down to the whole "toxic community" argument. And I only meant memorization is not the only factor as many seem to be saying/thinking. The bigger factor is being able to adapt when the pattern doesn't always apply (phase is a little early/late, some moves overlap, you make an error in judgment, etc).

I see the point, nvm