please stop make the game easier.

[MilanFrozen]

For MMOs, there hasn't been one that started easy and went to hard that I know of. The recent ones that generally have been hard from the start, even if they target that niche, really suffer and fail to keep a large playerbase.

Two I can think of are Wildstar and Darkfall. Wildstar had pretty punishing pve raids, and that was one of the biggest factors in losing player interest. Darkfall was full loot pvp, but even then the time sink and relative difficulty of getting to a good level of play doomed it. I think Aion and in the past Lineage shed a lot of playerbase through punishing difficulty too. Terraria isn't really an MMO and its difficulty is optional and tailored to players who might want to use it when they are bored with the rest of the game. Its not a global change from the start.

I agree with Kamatsu in that not everyone will improve to the same level. I mean, if anything this game shows that they can't; or we'd never had stormblood needing to massively simplify everything.

Going at this in one go.

Wildstar and Darkfall were hard though from the start and the argument is that a game has it's difficulty increased. Aion and Lineage both also could be argued to have gotten easier (or more new player friendly depending on your point of view). I'd also argue with you till the cows come home that Wildstar is not unpopular solely due to difficulty, but that's because I personally view the game as having multiple major gameplay flaws, lukewarm story and a poorly conceived endgame. I've played the damned game enough to know that it's about as typical as an MMO gets barring the slippery slidey movement.

Coincidentally did you know Terraria supports up to 256 players per server? You won't be able to get that many on a run of the mill home pc for sure, but you can on a powerful machine. Say the same type of server they'd use for Final Fantasy? It's certainly no typical MMO type, but it has the required number to be considered alongside it (if we're getting pedantic about things). Also fine I relent that expert is optional. Though then I point to hard-mode through defeating the wall of flesh. The game play arguably shifts to a higher gear at that point.

In terms of games becoming more difficult rather than easier I was more so arguing in general. I'm ok if you want to point to any game not in the same genre that does it. I'd certainly like to know about it and the effects it had on it's player base. And no I don't mean something like nerfing an aspect of the game that makes it harder. That would fall more so under just modifying a game and how a player may disagree with the changes and is a whole other can of worms.

I don't remember saying that all players eventually reach the same skill (a skill cap). Not everyone is going to reach the same skill level, but everyone will be more skilled after starting than when they started and will continue to progress in skill. Even if the progress seems minor or insignificant.

Lastly, I want to point out that I'm not defending the OP's opinion in it's entirety, just some of it. I, for example, abhor the removal of skills, but I'm totally for being able to do old dungeons/trials at max level. I'm ok with them becoming obsolete and 'removable' from your bars to make things easier on players, but I believe that it's a horrendous waste to simply remove an ability because fitting all the skills on the bar is too hard for some. It really raises the question of 'which skills are on the chopping block for the next expansion?' and a skill effect/animation can be quite enjoyed and missed. I'd sooner the skills simply be there, but be pointless than to see them vanish. But this isn't quite so much about difficulty per say even that I argue. More so that I am saying that if the difficulty being lowered is the cause of the skills being chopped, I am against it. How long until my favorite ability is tossed because 'it was too hard to use'?

[RiyahArp]

Well, Wildstar i think declined mostly through endgame. I mean people will forgive a lot in general for a game, but my understanding of it was the endgame grind was so punishing it killed off players quite a bit.

Games that start easy and go hard in other genres? Hmm. Probably would go with both fighting games and real time strategy ones as genres. There's a big gap between SF2 and Tekken or Virtua Fighter in terms of mechanics, and recently the most popular games tend to be easier anime fighters like naruto or DBZ games. RTS games wound up being really hard due to player skill selection that they are a bit of a dead genre outside of starcraft. Both tend to attract the hardcore now, and struggle to keep casuals, especially in online play.

I think the point about skill raising is that usually people think that everyone can improve to the level they are. Like savage players really do assume everyone can do it. The argument that the game needs to be harder assumes everyone will rise to the challenge and succeed, and I think people downplay that not everyone can, or will want to, or will find doing so fun.

Well...the skills being chopped mostly were dead weight. You don't need to have two dots on a mob per class unless the class is made around dots, but every job had that in HW. It wound up being a mechanic that people failed more than one they found fun. Some stuff made little sense; why need multiple buffs taking up slots when all they do is increase percentage of damage? Just combine them, or fold the damage into the ability.

[KisaiTenshi]

I think the point about skill raising is that usually people think that everyone can improve to the level they are. Like savage players really do assume everyone can do it. The argument that the game needs to be harder assumes everyone will rise to the challenge and succeed, and I think people downplay that not everyone can, or will want to, or will find doing so fun.

In most MMO's, every patch cycle obsoletes the previous skill set. FFXIV basically acknowledged this is what normally happens and instead "stacked" the skills that are basically the same, and scales them by level/level-sync. But other MMO's also tend to lock you to one class/job, so if you pick healer in another game, you are basically picking the hard/hardest class to level because you do so much less damage and have much less of DPS toolkit, if any. Where as if you pick a DPS class in other MMO's, you usually end up with no self-healing toolkit at all and have to rely on expensive pots. So if you are really good at getting money in the game, it's easy. If you're not, then it's a grind either way.

Like for all the flack FFXIV gets for being easy, it doesn't let you faceroll all the content by acquiring the best gear and no skill, which is what many other MMO's do. "Here's new gear, it makes (easy content) so easy that you 1-hit-ko everything, including the boss."

If they tightened up the ilevel sync to the original release values, it would be more fun when replayed, but it would make gear pointless.

[MilanFrozen]

Well...the skills being chopped mostly were dead weight. You don't need to have two dots on a mob per class unless the class is made around dots, but every job had that in HW. It wound up being a mechanic that people failed more than one they found fun. Some stuff made little sense; why need multiple buffs taking up slots when all they do is increase percentage of damage? Just combine them, or fold the damage into the ability.

I think you are missing the point of my contempt. An ability animation/effect/icon are all gone when removed. This is more of an artistic complaint than a game play one. Though it could be argued as game play since the enjoyment of the animation could be perceived in a game play light. Also I'd like to point out that baking one skill into another changes them both. It's entirely possible to lose two skills in the process of trying preserve one. Either way it would be a net loss. And if we're going to remove skills then take the game a step further and allow us to adjust skill animations for skills and readd them as optional animations/effects for some abilities.

Surely this would be a lot of work and probably not worth it, but I'm free to be upset about the loss of anything. I also don't like it when you get 'ability gaps'. What I mean is like there is a miasma one and I think a miasma two and I think there is a four, but I believe three is gone. So you get miasma one, it changes to miasma two(?) and then you get aoe miasma. I can't remember exactly what the abilities are off the top of my head, I just know that it skips a number in the chain and that's lame. Nit picking for sure, but I just wanted to point it out.

-snip-

Can you link the source for this loss? I'm under the impression guild wars 2 is not a subscription based MMO and that sales would be loss relative to the previous expansion, not due to the expansion content (one could not experience without owning the game).