(04-14-2014, 09:29 PM)synaesthetic Wrote: I don't complain about games just to be a downer. When it comes to single-player games I may offer my opinion but I won't go on about it. MMOs are a different story--if I complain loudly and long enough, the developers may realize that they need to change things up.
If you were the customer of a service, say mobile phone service, and the service was "okay" but not spectacular, but no other service filled your needs, would you simply remain silent about it? Or would you complain every time your signal tanked for an entire day?
@Ignacius: I really think there's a market for what you're talking about, but it's definitely not the mainstream MMO market. That sort of thing appeals to the Kickstarter indie crowd. Most MMO players don't want to deal with that kind of gameplay. How do I know? Old MMOs had those punishing and harsh gameplay mechanics, and people complained about them so much that they were changed. New games that came out didn't have them because most players didn't want them, and the developers saw they could attract far more customers if the games weren't so incredibly punishing.
I know that if XIV decided to revert to 1999-2000 era MMO mechanics, I would probably quit right away. I'm not a teenager anymore. I don't have time for a game that you cannot solo in, a game where even the weakest monsters can slaughter you with impunity, a game where you have to dedicate at least a four-hour chunk of time in order to actually progress at all. I'm an adult and I have other things to do besides waste all of my day playing video games. Granted, I do spend many hours playing them (I am a gamer, after all) but I would not play a "hardcore" MMO. I bet you that most MMO players in 2014 would not want to, either.
We just don't have that kind of time anymore.
See, but I think you've confused two things that aren't in any way connected: Â difficulty and time management. Â Which, granted, isn't something I hold against you; EVERYONE does that. Â But a game being difficult, and a game requiring a lot of time to complete, are not the same thing.
Take FFXI for example. Â People used to say it was a lot harder than WoW, and so it was. Â However, it wasn't hard because of the amount of time it took to level and work (which was significant). Â It was hard because as soon as you were out of the introductory levels, there was no solo play. Â You got your party in the Valkurm Dunes, pulled a mob into the party, and killed it. Â Ad nauseum. Â Not many games, for good reason, require a full party to do everything in the game.
However, there are plenty of ways to make a game challenging and deep for people who only have two hours a day to play. Â One that comes to mind is setting up a set of outposts deep in wilderness, which means you can make the journey in two hour chunks to kill whatever you need to kill, but it might take you a week at that pace to get there. Â You might also need to stock supplies or use knowledge to craft survival items while out there. Â Sometimes you'd have to be careful because things might hunt you along the way, or you'll need to kill lesser enemies to get what you need as far as supplies go. Â That way, if you decide you want to take an expedition to kill something hard in the open world, it's an ordeal that you can do in small chunks; it would just take a lot of chunks. Â All you have to make sure is that all things can be completed in two hours, including the fight.
You can make all those things, travel, combat, and gathering difficult. Â It doesn't necessarily have to be long.
And let's face it, most of what people were complaining about in vanilla WoW wasn't how hard the game was, it was the logistical stuff that's been improved lately. Â I wouldn't want to go back to /lookingforgroup instead of having a Dungeon Finder, for example. Â Putting a PUG together back in the day was horrible.