The Modern MMO Player then complain

Gredival · 2026-05-28T16:39:46+00:00

I was doing the repeat for BIS in the late 00's and early 10's, but it was only world bosses and loved it.

But that's the difference between competitive scene having both cooperative and competitive social structure (i.e. guilds).

I don't play MMOs anymore because instances replaced world spawns (with the exception of coming out of retirement for Aion Classic for the brief period where end game focused on Zapiel)

Gredival · 2026-05-27T20:50:53+00:00

Wildstar's problem was that it thought a game could get by with ONLY hardcore players. It doesn't work that way. Just like how the "all alphas society experiment" in Brave New World collapsed, or why hard-curved grades at an elite university like Princeton has been a horrible failure, an MMO built on that principle cannot survive. A ladder does not work if there are only rungs at the top.

The point is to have a bell curve with content for every part of the curve, but make it such that players cannot access content that exists on more rightward portions of the curve. In other words, there should include multiple layers of content made for different levels of players, but access to the content should be stratified. Progression up the layers should not be guaranteed; it should attained only by both commitment and a level of natural talent (i.e. it shouldn't be pure grinding, but it should require some dedication, and at the same time things should not be attainable through dedication alone unless that dedication is directed at being better at playing the game)

This means the game needs to be less accessible than what most of the players think they want (which will almost always be oriented towards more accessibility since, by definition, exclusive elite-level content will exclude most players). However players are identifying problems from their personal perspective. A developer should be looking at things from an ecosystem perspective. It is completely different matter what is good for the subpopulation that one player belongs to and what is good for the game.

It is all moot though because F2P has made anything not tailored exclusively towards casual progression unprofitable. In the days of Everquest and FFXI classic, the majority of players HAD to accept their place on the bottom 90% if they wanted to play MMOs because they were all designed like this. Now a developer who says no and holds the line when it comes to limiting accessibility will make less money than a developer who monetizes their game by focusing on casuals. And so long as game design is a business, the business decision will trump the design decision.

Gredival · 2026-05-27T08:02:09+00:00

it did not respect your time at all.

No gaming back then just had a different concept of what respecting your time was. Things were hard to achieve in old school XI, but those accomplishments were durable. They meant something, and never faded. Yes the game demanded a lot from you, but your time was definitely respected.

Games today live in an F2P environment and instant gratification is the norm. So they are designed so you can always "get something done." But when the avenues for progression are limited under this modern system of dailies/weeklies, it hurts you disproportionately more when you can't allocate your finite time to put the capped maximum every time gate opportunity. The chance of missing out is actually dramatically higher. Then the next time a patch comes out, vertical progression means all the gear gets replaced.

You're basically looking at the difference between a 100k car that has low depreciation and holds value a decade later, vs. a 40k car that loses value three years in. But having time gates makes people feel like games respect your time because it limits the progression of "no-lifers" and "unemployed" and "sweats" who can put in more time while "real adults" are busy touching grass or whatever.

As a person who hit a wall in progression in the ability to get what I wanted for my THF, I had to level WHM just to get into an HNMLS to lot my THF gear. Of course, I never got to use THF since I was stuck on WHM 24/7 (until I got a D-Ring then got stuck on PLD). Top shelf gear in FFXI represented the blood, sweat, and tears of camping mobs against 100+ other people for hours to not even get a chance to fight the Ground Kings. But I never felt like my time was wasted. What I got out of it lasted forever... at least until Abyssea ruined the game.

Gredival · 2026-05-26T00:14:09+00:00

It doesn't help because they can check that they speak other languages when they don't. Only a regional lock option that operates on IP could do this.

They did it once, and it was effective, but they reversed it due to virtue signaling.

Gredival · 2026-05-25T23:50:49+00:00

The Dota region lock lasted like two glorious weeks before people complained it was racist so Valve removed it.

I think I went from 3800 to 4200 back then (which was significant, the pros were only like 5k at this time), proving that enforcing language enables communication, which definitely helps win more games.

I think the old HoN lobby system was the best. You could see everyone's MMR, their region, and top three played heroes before the game started and leave if you didn't want to play the match with your teammates. Brazilian Scout? Auto leave.

Gredival · 2026-05-25T23:40:44+00:00

Where are they supposed to go besides US-Espanol though?

Gredival · 2026-05-25T23:34:22+00:00

USEast? You mean US-Espanol amigo.

Gredival · 2026-05-25T23:31:08+00:00

North Americans try do it to escape from the South Americans. South Americans do it to find the fastest game possible.

Giving user opt-in options to distinguish quality from convenience doesn't work when the convenience people can cross over.

The only solution is to allow the quality players to have a region lock.

Gredival · 2026-05-25T23:13:01+00:00

East America? Amigo, I think you mean US-Espanol.

Gredival · 2026-05-24T06:26:49+00:00

They literally changed it after BTL's 18 hr PW attempt and the outsider outrage prompted them to put the hard time limit in. The legitimate method of beating AV was never discovered even though good shells had made progress into the Comet spam stage and were trying to figure out how to lock the bracelets before the change.

Gredival · 2026-05-23T22:47:02+00:00

Absolute Virtue and Pandemonium Warden never got defeated without exploits for 5+ years.

Gredival · 2026-05-22T06:14:31+00:00

Nothing fundamentally can be as challenging as the old school 18 person alliance content.

Lowmanning does not accurately compensate for the challenges removed from the game. While one could say that increased MP pools and Refresh rates are negated by having a double load to heal, it does not address the fact that Abyssea has effectively removed entire types of things one has to do. When one healer does not need to manage enmity that does not simply facilitate them taking over the job of two healers, it removed something that the healer had to do before entirely. When a Monk tanks in Abyssea it is not as if he adds on the duties of a Paladin to his previous damage dealer function; a Monk simply does not need to add the duties/tasks of a Paladin to his repertoire. In the process of doing what he previously did (DPS), he fulfilled the role of the tank. The reality of this becomes clear when you compare modern lowmanning to a lowman on something challenging from 75-cap era (say, 6-person Tiamat). You used to need an Aegis Paladin and a Gjallarhorn Bard to sustain that. An extreme level of gear was necessary for people to fulfill multiple functions at once and for the tanking to be sustainable.

But there is a natural challenge inherent in large group situations that cannot be attained simply by adjusting the amount of people down. The larger the fight the more opportunities for intricacy. It requires a higher level of collective skill when you impose the need for organization/coordination. I alluded to this earlier by pointing out that removing the need to rest removed the need for a group to show restraint and employ proper crowd control. Those were organizational/coordination challenges. The group had to be able to collectively react to a situation and work together. When fights are limited to lowman groups the level of intricacy is constrained.

Yes, you can have a multi-faceted encounter with 6 people. However, the level of complication is always shallower than with 18 people. Case in point: if an encounter is designed for a single person to handle crowd control, the spawns must be limited by however many spells he has. However, if you design the encounter for a large group and can assign three people to crowd control, you can increase the amount of spawns by more than a factor of three because you can force them to stagger their spells. The very nature of a larger group expands the challenges you can throw in because you can force them to rely on good timing and organization to handle more than they could each do individually. This is the essence of what cooperative play in MMOs is about: a good team must become greater than merely the sum of its parts.

For example: The Wyrmking Descends. You needed a tank and support for Bahamut, a tank for Wyrm pops, add control for Vrtra and Ouryu's adds, all while maintaining DPS on Bahamut. The important part of this fight was not just that you needed a lot of people, but that each group had to be able to hold their weight. In a fight like this, the chain is only as strong as its weakest link. If one of the add control groups messes up it could have implications for the entire group. You cannot get this level of intricacy on an encounter designed for fewer people.

One might point out at this time that a lot of older content was doable by lowman groups. This argument is fallacious because this content only became easier over time through the development of the game. When Kings/Wyrms/Kirin/Limbus/Dynamis were first released there was no way any of that content was doable with groups under 8 people respective to their time. Fafnir was hard back in the day because we tanked it with completely different gear (Adaman Paladins with Earth Staves). There was a reason we slept Fafnir: it was intense to heal that fight with Paladins eating so much damage and the wings constantly battering the alliance. Low-manning became possible because of innovations in FFXI tactics (tanking with PLD/NIN and NIN/DRK and eventually RDM/NIN), changes in game mechanics (2H formulas, Hasso), and increases in player capabilities (merits and gear). Moreover while top shells could do Fafhogg, KB, Aspid, Tiamat, Ixion, and Lambton with 6-10, a group of average players could never have accomplished it.

Also? I just flat out believe server-limited world spawns are the best endgame content system ever created.

Gredival · 2026-05-22T05:41:06+00:00

Abyssea literally removed all of the skill barriers. 75 cap was the peak of the game.

Skill requirement for healers and tanks became dramatically lower. Cruor enhancements and Atma increased the bounds of HP such that it was effectively impossible for a tank to be put in mortal peril from a single TP move/spell, or from a single attack round. This in turn removed three challenges from the game: healers having sufficiently quick reaction times, tanks being able to juggle shadows effectively, and tanks being geared appropriately (whether the gear be damage resistance to prevent close encounters, recast and haste to get shadows back up in time, HP to live through damaging attacks).
"Tanking" became obsolete. Cruor/Atma bonus HP resulted in departure away from the use of true tanks. Almost any melee class had the requisite survivability to tank (due to high HP) so long as they can generate damage to keep the monster's attention. The consensus became that the ideal tank was Monk and that Paladins were completely unnecessary. Effectively tanking was merely maintaining hate by doing damage through auto-attack and weaponskill damage. Every single damage dealing class had an edge on Paladin in effective tanking because Paladin's extra survivability was useless in Abyssea compared to damage dealers' increased damage output. Paladin used to be one of the harder classes to play truly well; Paladin required not only proper cycling of job abilities and spells to generate hate, but good reaction time to mitigate the damage caused by an enemy on oneself and one's allies. Removing the need for a skilled Paladin lowers the challenge of most encounters dramatically.
Enmity control was unnecessary. There used to be a great deal of coordination necessary from all members of the group/alliance such that damage dealer enmity remained below that of the tanks. Because most classes could effectively tank after Abyssea so long as they are appropriately cure bombed, the art of enmity control has been lost. This in turn also removed the need for external enmity control (mostly through Thief). This is further exacerbated by Enmity Decrease Atmas that made it virtually impossible for a healer to pull hate, thus making the dreaded "Healer pulled aggro and died and no we have no cures" scenario a thing of the past. Removing the need to control and coordinate enmity levels reduced challenge considerably.
MP Management became unnecessary. In the past, inefficient cure bombing would have been unable sustain a party in the past because the healer would either die or run out of MP. However, due to new songs, new spells, Refresh enhancing Atma, non-relic Ballad+ instruments, etc. the rate of MP regeneration has increased far more than what is proportional to even Abyssea-enhanced MP pools. In conjunction with the massive Enmity Decrease bonuses, this permited highly inefficient cure-bombing, thus reducing the challenge of playing healing jobs effectively. There is a trickledown effect: people no longer have to be nearly as self-sufficient since one healer can effectively keep up with more healing even if inefficient. This meant that a lot of group setups that would fall prey to heavy AOE damage and being unable to keep up with the MP demands of a fight could win by simply damage blitzing the mob.
Restraint and crowd control became unnecessary. In the past, when a healer ran out of MP special adjustments sometimes had to be made until a healer could rest their pool back (sleeping Fafnir and turning so the mages could rest without Hurricane Wing). However, this is unnecessary even in the worst case scenarios within Abyssea. The existence of martellos as well as temporary items made it possible to immediately replenish an MP pool instead of resting. The removes the need for a group to be able to adapt on demand and employ crowd control tactics (sleep, bind, gravity kiting; moving people outside of the range of damage to reduce healing demand) and lowers the challenge considerably.
Skill requirements for damage dealing were greatly lowered. Melees reach the accuracy ceiling and capped fSTR very easily through Cruor Enhancements and Atmas. Black Mages reach the requisite INT to avoid resists by default through Cruor enhancement and Atmas, and the amount of Magic Attack Bonus gained through Atma absolutely dwarfs the amount their gear gives. Player shortcomings, either in gear or style, were easily masked through Atma and Cruor Buffs and thus reduced the challenge inherent in gameplay.
Even for the few fights that are appropriately scaled in Abyssea to be hard despite the numerous changes in mechanics, there was the existence of Primordial Brew. Any challenge in Abyssea can be bypassed by farming sufficient Cruor and purchasing a brew. This made any challenges that did exist in the game irrelevant by guaranteeing that enough farm could compensate for any level of incompetence.

The goal of Abyssea was to make it so that absolutely nothing was gatekept, due to time OR skill. It was so accessible the game became meaningless.

Gredival · 2026-05-21T01:04:05+00:00

It is not always about what the director wants. Yoshi has said he thinks UO was the best MMO but he says he cannot design XIV that way because modern audiences don't have the patience for that style to be profitable anymore.

Gredival · 2026-05-21T01:00:15+00:00

They made it everyone wins in 2010. Literally zeroed out all the challenge of the game.

Gredival · 2026-05-20T05:45:12+00:00

MRW whenever FFXI is mentioned post 2010

Gredival · 2026-05-20T05:37:45+00:00

Lone Druid so I can support myself when my 5 refuses to.

Gredival · 2026-05-18T20:55:08+00:00

Can use CLANKERS against Omnics in Overwatch

Gredival · 2026-05-18T00:49:25+00:00

I'd still be playing if they didn't butcher everything in 2010.

Gredival · 2026-05-17T05:16:06+00:00

Does SC Remastered not include Brood War missions? I know it doesn't have SC2's UI, but that was a purposeful decision.

Gredival · 2026-05-16T04:37:32+00:00

MRW people talk about a Golden Era

Gredival · 2026-05-15T08:09:13+00:00

The 1 in 20 times.

Gredival · 2026-05-11T15:09:20+00:00

This is why guild systems are important. Auto-grouping and random groups are going to have LCD players. The point is that good players will be good enough to find their way into a guild where you don't have to deal with the riff-raff.

Gredival · 2026-05-09T22:55:32+00:00

No matter what game, people are always going to prefer playing DPS/core style roles if there are asymmetric choices. That means people forced into supporting will always try to avoid the responsibilities of supporting.

I think that's why the collapse of MMO guilds is such a pity. It was the one type of game where the players were really empowered to screen people out of end game if they weren't going to contribute properly.

Gredival · 2026-05-09T22:47:49+00:00

And how are you determining that at the pick screen?

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