The main issue with MMO's, is actually the singular thing that draws me to them.

That, is, longevity.

There's been plenty of MMO's that have been fun to play. At least for a while. The issue comes when the need to extend things comes along. When people hit end-game and "Complete" the initial content, how does the game then continue to be "Fun" and "New" and "Engaging"?

Most MMO's do the whole increased level cap and infinite gear treadmill. Which of course has the downside of making literally all content besides the newest endgame stuff obsolete. Not only because the difficulty is non-existent for max level players (With exceptions like FFXIV's Ultimate difficulty that hard caps level and gear - But of course then the issue is having reason to even bother with doing it after completing it once), but a lot of the focus is to push players into that new max level content.

Some MMO's do sideways progression. Games like City of Heroes (RIP), GW2 and of course ESO. But of course this leads to the problem of how do you keep things interesting when someone's hit max level and is fully geared? What is left for them to do? Do you just churn out new story content that pacifies players for like a week max and then they have to wait several months for you to produce the next batch of story content? Do you push people into an endless gear grind by constantly adjusting gear so people have to keep farming for new stuff?

A few MMO's rely on PvP as an endgame. But even this has the problem of things getting stale. How do you keep PvP interesting? Do you just keep pushing out balance changes so the best classes get destroyed and new ones take their place? (Or do you keep the same classes absolutely broken forever until the game shuts down like Warhammer Online and the dominance of BW/Sorc and Choppa/Slayer). I suppose constant pendulum swinging balance works for MOBAs (But then again, it's easy to just pick a different hero/champion when you get into a game rather than having to create and level and gear up a new MMO character)

Overall, it's simply a fundamental problem with the difference in time it takes to produce content and time it takes to consume content (Even with plenty of time wasting filler like timegating progression and grinds).

With added sprinkle of MMO's tend to rely a lot on dangling a carrot in front of players, always needing to give them something to aim for. (Which is true for many games too. Even games like Skyrim that people play for ages, they're not just playing the same character running around killing bandits and dragons for 1000 hours. People are playing new characters with new builds and using new mods for new content)

It's rare for a game to be fun enough in its core gameplay loop to keep people's attention. There's often a need to have some sort of progression. The main exception would be things like Roguelites where the fun is that runs are often different with different items, different enemies, different map layouts which can supercede the need to progress.

Even in my idealized world where MMO's focus on providing multiple avenues of content (Rather than JUST Dungeons/Raids or JUST PvP as endgame content) you will eventually run into the problem of people simply consuming the content and asking "What's next?" before the next batch of stuff is ready - Even more so for people whom don't like to engage in certain content and so don't.

This would require ESO players and the devs to play other games.

pklemming wrote: »

So, there was a 2 day Evercraft pre alpha last weekend. Everything I was trying to explain as to why ESO is so bland was addressed in this game. It was fresh and new, not formulated, not balanced on a spreadsheet and just fun. That is what games should give... fun.

Sure games should be fun but any game with PvP, eg. ESO needs balance and mathematically (i.e. "by spreadsheet") is the sensible solution.

That said, how much of "balancing" is the developers truly seeking balance and how much is them simply trying to push players around in playing other classes, sets etc. is questionable.

It shouldn't have escaped anyone's notice that every new class in this game, and this tends to be true in all class based games, is overpowered at launch and nerfed / "balanced" later.

And I think the real issue that as in any class based game, it's very easy for any single class change to push players across the line into no longer liking their class.

Like many TES single player fans, I reckon ESO should have been classless. But having them I originally settled on sorcerer as my main.

I quite liked the clanfear. That's kinda dinosaur cool. Then the devs changed sorc pets and clanfear became the stamina pet. I don't do stam.

They also changed the primary damage ability - crystal shard - into a proc.

I absolutely don't want to be a walking, talking slot machine.

And that's just my tastes. Any single of the many other changes made to classes over the years could easily have pushed players over the edge.

The developer intent is into playing one of the other classes but obviously players also have the option of not playing ESO at all.

pklemming wrote: »

Additionally, it was not 'press button to loot', giving the players no real challenge.

If you find challenge in running around looting every corpse individually, good for you. Seriously.

I'd call that tedious.