This post will obviously revolve around MMOs and the upcoming Wildstar; however, the general idea is the same for all games.
Taken from an article by MikeB @ mmorpg.com
http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/staffblog/092011/22042_Community-Spotlight-Are-MMOs-Too-Easy
What are games of today doing to get this accomplished feeling? Well if you've played anything from facebook games to an MMORPG you've seen them pop up everywhere in the past several years. Achievements. Gaming companies have been placing achievements at every corner, on every item, and with every swing of your sword. They do this so the player can feel accomplished when they complete something, and want to push on for more. However, is "Planting the Bomb" (Counter-Strike) really an accomplishment?
My current feel is that when achievements originally came out they were a huge success. People even became known as "Achievement Whores". So what did the gaming industry do? They started making them, everywhere! Things that were suppose to be just part of the game, were turned into achievements. To make people become less frustrated and play their game more, the gaming industry decided to make things easier, dying over and over is never fun... Or is it?
I haven't researched these different examples, but know the Steve Jobs one is true. So i'm assuming they're all true.
If we never fail, can we truly succeed?
Also, this kind of goes alot with how nice & fast things are now in games.... one argument to what I have below is well, in games you use to not regen HP unless you picked up health orbs of some kind - was this change seen as bad when it was first done? Is it still bad?
Few notable changes,
Over the evolution of MMO's I've noticed some changes. These changes were at first begged and pleaded by some to be changed, but did they really help? What do I even mean? (I will use vanilla WoW as my primary base but the changes are true in general) In WoW, you would have to run far distances to get flight paths, even after getting the path you would have to fly from one place to another. Fast travel? Maybe but it's not instant. While flying you could do things like check your inventory, talk to guildies, make a sandwich, take a shower (for those long ones), get a drink, talk in general chat, etc etc... Now everything is switching to fast travel, I get where I'm going, do what I need and blink out to my next location. I feel this is one of the things that is destroying games. I see the positive of "Well I only have an hour of play time, I dont wanna spend 5 minutes flying" But ya know what? That was part of the game and it helped keep and improve the games sense of scale.
Another example that came up just recently was from Guild Wars 2 while myself and other friends were playing. Someone's bags were full and that person was told how to click a button and deposit all crafting/collectible materials instantly from anywhere. Do I use this function, yup, does it help me? Sure does... Do I want it in any other MMO ever? Nope. This goes along with making the game easier, I feel you should have a certain amount of bag space, and if you are full then you'll have to choose what to keep and what to trash. This helps keep some realism in the game. I use to love that in EQ, money affected your weight and could slow you down. I specifically recall going to the bank and converting my platinum into copper and not being able to move.
Flying mounts, I feel these need to stay out of games. In WoW BC it actually wasn't bad and flying mounts didn't take away too much from the sense of scale some how, in WoTLK however I just felt like I flew over everything. Same with other games. Staying away from flying mounts was like one thing I actually liked about GW2.
Joining instances, I really feel that if you want to join an instance or structured PVP type thing, that you should be at the entrance of the place and only be able to gain access that way. The idea that I can just queue and zone in from miles away goes along with that unrealistic feel again. (Finding groups anywhere is fine though obviously IMO, though I'm even still partial to having to find people in that zone or on your friends/guild list. This can also help build stronger communities by trying to befriend people so you have people to run instances with in the future, rather than just queuing up and getting a random group)
I'm really interested in the opinions of others on this. I really feel like they're trying to make things as "easy" as possible and it's taking away from the game.
Defend your thinking!
Another example that came up just recently was from Guild Wars 2 while myself and other friends were playing. Someone's bags were full and that person was told how to click a button and deposit all crafting/collectible materials instantly from anywhere. Do I use this function, yup, does it help me? Sure does... Do I want it in any other MMO ever? Nope. This goes along with making the game easier, I feel you should have a certain amount of bag space, and if you are full then you'll have to choose what to keep and what to trash. This helps keep some realism in the game. I use to love that in EQ, money affected your weight and could slow you down. I specifically recall going to the bank and converting my platinum into copper and not being able to move.
Flying mounts, I feel these need to stay out of games. In WoW BC it actually wasn't bad and flying mounts didn't take away too much from the sense of scale some how, in WoTLK however I just felt like I flew over everything. Same with other games. Staying away from flying mounts was like one thing I actually liked about GW2.
Joining instances, I really feel that if you want to join an instance or structured PVP type thing, that you should be at the entrance of the place and only be able to gain access that way. The idea that I can just queue and zone in from miles away goes along with that unrealistic feel again. (Finding groups anywhere is fine though obviously IMO, though I'm even still partial to having to find people in that zone or on your friends/guild list. This can also help build stronger communities by trying to befriend people so you have people to run instances with in the future, rather than just queuing up and getting a random group)
I'm really interested in the opinions of others on this. I really feel like they're trying to make things as "easy" as possible and it's taking away from the game.
Defend your thinking!
