Why's the sky falling over "dumbed down" content?

[Skidrow Bro]

I remembered when I first got into Freemarch I was only level 10 and I could barely kill the squirrels running around. Once I hit max level, had way better gear, knew my class better, and knew the game better I could pull three of them, sometimes four but that was a HUGE risk, and own them. Obviously, it was because I figured out I had to press A, B, B, A, Start, B, Select before I pulled.

Wow, sorry to here you suck but your comparison is horrible at best. I was comparing being in a zone of level not being in a zone that I am 30 levels above.

[Azreell]

Odd but the most obvious reason for this trend in content from a majority of the current online games is simply the market which they are based in.

Society as a whole dictates market trends.

While I don't care as I have stated prior about them making prior content easier it does follow suit with the entire entitlement society in which we now live.

[Skidrow Bro]

I posted this in another thread but it was a flame war thread so I would like to repost it here. The problem I see happening is that while we have pretty much two different sides going on, the arguments keep stemming because only one side is getting what they want.

[Unhurtable]

That is the core of it. The elitists feel they lose some of their bragging rights. Same nonsense as with vanity items that you get in an event and then can buy at a later time after the event is long over. Lots of elitist QQ. Ironic, really.

>Elitism

Or.... some of us want a challenge, and think that is fun.

Yes, you heard me. Fun. I actually like being challenged, and when you overcome great challenges, you feel very good in your tummy.

[Lanceknight]

my guess as to why they nerf raids is to get more people into the highest tier raid as fast as possible so they can experience it. why would you want unnerffed raids that you've done over and over? you're lucky they don't have raid buffs like wow that'll let you roll through the content in minutes.

so instead of complaining, be happy that you don't have to spend hours and hours during raids just to get gear you need. i'm happy and i haven't even raided since i started playing.

god dont know how many times i gonna repeat this, but then i guess if people to lazy to read strats for bosses in game then they obviously to lazy to read the previous posts

the nerfed content is where new players should learn to play, but becuase its so easy now they just breeze by it, and when they reach hard content like HK, they whine and cry for nerfs. they never learned basic mechanics and how to use best or atleast optimal specs and rotations at easier content, and thus how are they supposed to be able to get past stuff when it gets harder.....

[Galibier]

Getting back to the OPs point. I think the problem starts with how much freedom devs have in communicating with us. On dev says "we design the content after closely watching how long it takes testers to clear it to preserve progression". In the same RJ podcast the dev said that they would also adjust content as time went on so people could catch up.

Thing is other devs talk about how they make decisions not based on quantifiable facts but rather on player input. "Input" to some is a synonym to QQ. Now if you look at all of it as a whole then one could say that the devs simply cave to those who cry the loudest. That is not often the case of course but with the devs having as much communication freedom as they do you can lose sight of a coherent vision and when that happens conspiracies abound.

I for one am not against nerfing a bit of HK so people can catch up. I just think it eould have been better to wait just a tad until ID was out for a week or two. Those done with HK would be buried in the new zone and then they would give 2 diddly darns and the others get to see the content. Everyone wins at that point.

[Tenof]

The reason behind I think is because there is no "bad players" representative on the forums.

So-called hardcore players call bad players "casuals" and blame them, while self-esteemed "casuals" (fun-loving players who don't have too much time in hands or whose interest isn't really into raids) react to the accusation, making the argument ever parallel.

[Edit] Oops this was meant for the other post "I'm curious...", but oh well. It still is relevant I guess. :-/

[Skidrow Bro]

Getting back to the OPs point. I think the problem starts with how much freedom devs have in communicating with us. On dev says "we design the content after closely watching how long it takes testers to clear it to preserve progression". In the same RJ podcast the dev said that they would also adjust content as time went on so people could catch up.

Thing is other devs talk about how they make decisions not based on quantifiable facts but rather on player input. "Input" to some is a synonym to QQ. Now if you look at all of it as a whole then one could say that the devs simply cave to those who cry the loudest. That is not often the case of course but with the devs having as much communication freedom as they do you can lose sight of a coherent vision and when that happens conspiracies abound.

I for one am not against nerfing a bit of HK so people can catch up. I just think it eould have been better to wait just a tad until ID was out for a week or two. Those done with HK would be buried in the new zone and then they would give 2 diddly darns and the others get to see the content. Everyone wins at that point.

I agree but my argument is content outside of raids. The learning curve of playing classes should be done while leveling and doing dungeons so players can learn rotations, which specs work best in certain situations and such. Unfortunately there is no learning curve and a large majority hit a road block upon hitting 50

[Gray]

Unfortunately there is no learning curve and a large majority hit a road block upon hitting 50

not really, you could get greens for the stats and get dragged through experts/raid rifts now. plus most souls don't have an overly complex rotation (tank/heal is a little more complicated, as usual) or mechanics that are different from other MMOs.
plus the majority is that overgeared now that an undergeared or even bad player does not matter much.

most people I've met who were REALLY that new to the whole mmo-ordeal don't care about HK anyway, they have plenty to do besides raiding (and strangely enough "new" mmo players are most of the time not very eager to group because they're afraid to screw up or might have an unpleasant experience based on other peoples stories).
that's probably the picture most have in their mind when they think of "casuals".

sooner or later these will end up in a guild where people help them get better and get better gear, and they will progress, like in any other mmo, depending on their personal ability and the other players. or they don't care about that and just roll alts or something.

[Galibier]

I agree but my argument is content outside of raids. The learning curve of playing classes should be done while leveling and doing dungeons so players can learn rotations, which specs work best in certain situations and such. Unfortunately there is no learning curve and a large majority hit a road block upon hitting 50

Oh I completely agree I think the biggest mistake this game ever made was the nerfing of the 5 man content to make the lfd queue practical. The t2 dungeons were actually pretty good raid primers. You could NOT heal through the damage reflect on Warden in xRD until u had a lot of raid gear and even then it was dicey. You couldn't just burning the bug in xFC without worrying about the adds and the dps check on the mob before plutonous in xDSM was a genuine dps check for non raid gear players.

The problem is people wanted the lfd queue. Could you imagine the complete melt down of players if those encounters were the same? I still remember Gersh in his post 1.3 pod cast. He acknowledge they were going to have to nerf dungeouns for the lfd queue but he also slammed more than a few players when he said "we have gotten complaints about the difficulty of t2's but most of the complaints are really a learning curve issue." The Senior Producer basically said the people complaining needed to l2p. It's almost sad that people just said "thank you gor the queue and making the content easier" when the guy in charge when announcing it said they had to l2p. Bread and circuses comes to mind.

[Gray]

The problem is people wanted the lfd queue. Could you imagine the complete melt down of players if those encounters were the same? I still remember Gersh in his post 1.3 pod cast. He acknowledge they were going to have to nerf dungeouns for the lfd queue but he also slammed more than a few players when he said "we have gotten complaints about the difficulty of t2's but most of the complaints are really a learning curve issue." The Senior Producer basically said the people complaining needed to l2p. It's almost sad that people just said "thank you gor the queue and making the content easier" when the guy in charge when announcing it said they had to l2p. Bread and circuses comes to mind.

iirc no one complained about the difficulty. what people were annoyed about was the tedious number of trash (dsm was the worst offender) and the number of bugs/wonky mechanics that made it harder than it was supposed to (caelia's lightning in CC comes to mind).

the whole credit for nerfing the experts belongs to trion alone, no one wanted a RANDOM group composition (=only one healer for shorter queues, obsolete support and lower difficulty for the worst possible mix of people/specs), just a proper lfg-tool besides chat. people whined and they came up with the knee-jerk idea to just copy wow without even trying something inbetween. even worse, they screwed their whole properly balanced progression path of normal 50s -> T1 -> T2 this way.

but 5-man content was stuck anyway, even if they wouldn't have nerfed it. T2s would be farmed by hk-geared groups the same now, and new instances with higher difficulty and better rewards now would make the majority run these exclusively (same as ZG/ZA in wow).

at least they introduced master mode which only works with premades.

[Galibier]

No people did complain, not you, not me, but Gersh directly addressed complaints regarding the difficulty of boss encounters in the t2s and said they were because of learning curves more than badly tuned encounters. Also if you note my comments on this I basically think Gersh and other devs have a low opinion of a certain subset of the player base and I think, to an extent, they were proven right. After the queue was introduced I used it for a month then stopped using it unless I had at least 3 guildies because I had more failed than successful runs due to underperforming dps, tanks undergeared and incapable of holding AE aggro or healers who just couldn't. Now with their latest change they had t1s and t2s meet in the middle, even though with crafted and planar gear players can out gear the content in short order without ever stepping into a dungeon. Even now I hear guildies talking about nightmare groups.

There are indeed players who do not know what a silence or a purge is etc.and they were vocal enough pre 1.3 that Gersh felt he had to address them directly.

[Gray]

No people did complain, not you, not me, but Gersh directly addressed complaints regarding the difficulty of boss encounters in the t2s and said they were because of learning curves more than badly tuned encounters.

there will ALWAYS be people whining about something, I expect the devs to know that, especially regarding the locusts after a launch. I mean, what did they expect? offer challenging instances to a majority of players that came from lich king doesn't work without tears (just look at cata). but I didn't hear much whining about it in the game or on the forums back then, so how much whining about difficulty was there actually?

the only reason to adjust to that demographic that really can't dps with more than 2 buttons is money (which is ok, it's a business after all), but it affects other people as well when they take out the challenge - which is probably one the reasons some don't like changes in difficulty for current content.

but yeah, I stopped doing instances as well when 1.2 hit and let my sub run out. there just wasn't any fun left doing instances where the biggest challenge is to not fall asleep grinding trash...

[Noaani]

>Elitism

Or.... some of us want a challenge, and think that is fun.

Yes, you heard me. Fun. I actually like being challenged, and when you overcome great challenges, you feel very good in your tummy.

While I agree with this sentiment, Rift's combat system is incapable of delivering a challenge.

It doesn't matter how many phases or layers an encounter has, if all you need to do to kill it is press 1, 1, 1, 2, and maybe a few directional keys, the content will be easy.

As much as I hate to say it, EQ2 was able to deliver harder content than Rift ever can simply because you were not only playing the encounter, you were playing the class. People complained about having 15 attack spells that they needed to use in combat, but that level of complexity made for real challenge on the encounters where you needed to perform at 100%. It meant top end raids needed to be full of people that could get the most out of their class while keeping out of the fire, rather than just people that could keep out of the fire.

[Lanceknight]

It doesn't matter how many phases or layers an encounter has, if all you need to do to kill it is press 1, 1, 1, 2, and maybe a few directional keys, the content will be easy..

and yet that i to hard for some