one thing a lot of people have said over the years is

I think any new player who has been exposed to more than a couple of hours of online gaming would feel insulted by how stupidly easy it is. The only challenge is not falling asleep within 10 minutes of starting a session.

Any new player would probably try to understand what's going on, what is he/she supposed to do, how that particular class plays, familiarize himself/herself with the area where he/she's playing...

Generalizations like this one aren't really helpful in these discussions.

07/04/2013 12:57Posted by Nobbyholder

You mean about 1 afternoons work for a new intern? There have been literally dozens of constructive posts on how to do this. One very easy way of beginning to reimplement challenge to the levelling process is to re-introduce orange/red quests.

Changing anything in a game is not as simple as going in and changing numbers. It's easy to pull numbers out of thin air to make an argument look stronger, but the fact is, at the end of the day it's just made up numbers. (And there's also the underlying discussion if the leveling experience should be challenging for newcomers and veteran players alike, and so on).

Orange quests still exist. But keep in mind the color of the quest is only an indicator of how hard that quest will be based on your character level. If your character is level 40, and the quest you want to do is for level 44, it'll be displayed orange. While, if the quest is for level 30, it'll be grey.

Back in Vanilla WoW, if you were in, say, Eastern Plaguelands, at level 50, maybe you'd be able to take quests for levels 52 and 59, while one would be yellow, the other one would be displayed red. Now, since Eastern Plaguelands is a level 40-45 zone, you'll get quests within that level range.

07/04/2013 14:15Posted by Boxié

I would have to dedicate myself to do challenge mode dungeons, as I would have to be online together with four other people. PvP is not challenging, only part of that which is challenging is high end arena and what do you know, you need time and dedication to get there. Soloing raids... is that really all that is left? In Rift you find challenge in almost everything you do, from zone events to normal dungeons.

You can also do the Brawler's Guild content, which is quite challenging (particularly at Rank 7 and above).

for example, once upon a time you had to play a class to really understand how to play it, all the little nuances
now, i honestly believe i could roll a lvl90 (insert class ive never played) and excel at it within minutes.

The game does a much better job these days to tell you the basic things about your class (such as the most important abilities of the talent spec you pick), if you pair that with the amount of online resources available, I wouldn't be surprised if someone can excel at a particular class in a short amount of time after playing with it.

On the other hand, shouldn't the fun of playing the game be at overcoming challenges rather than making the game be obscure at things like not telling you what Hit or Critical strike chance are for? In fact, do you think the raid content would be as difficult as it is these days (mechanic wise) if people were still trying to figure out obscure class mechanics?

Just curious to see what do you mean when you talk about challenges in the game. There's the artificial challenge (understanding what your character does because the game just isn't telling you) or killing an innately difficult raid boss (for which the argument of not having enough time doesn't really work, since you could argue that finding the time required to kill a heroic boss should be, in fact, considered part of that challenge you crave for).

I can't really be bothered to cherry pick your post like you did mine but from the top I was talking from the perspective of a gamer who has actually played some online games before but is new to wow.

The game holds your hand from the very first second, shows you exactly where to go and what to do, flashes big warnings across your screen when a mob does a 'special' ability' and so on. It's like kindergarten gaming.

If you don't need (or like) those warnings and tips, you are more than welcome to turn them off on the settings (I'm not sure right now if you're referring to a particular one that can't be disabled).

The thing is, WoW is an MMORPG, so if you have played other MMORPGs before, or even RPGs, it's very likely you already have at least a basic grasp of what's going on. Picture a player that comes in completely blind to the genre, and suddenly all these things that you don't need make sense for them.

Is there a particular benefit to not having these warnings for new players besides making things artificially harder because that's how you think it should be? Sure, I totally get it feels as kindergarten gaming for you. But there're plenty of gamers out there, as well as people new to games.

08/04/2013 19:13Posted by Nobbyholder

You can easily and I mean easily level with just one damage skill, for example disc priest smite. Yep thats it, target mob, press button a few times, mob dies rinse and repeat for 85 or so levels. The mobs can be multiple levels higher and you still won't die if you learn to use your shield.

Leveling with just one damage skill has always been possible. Sure, before it was not as simple, or it was more frustrating, but possible regardless. I'm sure a fair share of us have seen during Burning Crusade level 70 agility geared warlocks... Should every creature be challenging to beat? To which degree? 3 abilties at least? How do we help people brand new to gaming or to this genre, that can't probably even get used to using those three constantly until finding themselves comfortable with controlling their characters' movement and so on? Do we just write them off as complete newbies unworthy of our time? I hope you understand where I'm coming from.

If you were, shock horror, to actually gain any skill at all whilst levelling, then you will find that it is very easy to kill mobs up to 8 levels higher (wearing no gear)..YET.. you cannot take the quests in for the mobs you are killing /puzzled

So you can only gain skill by beating mobs up to 8 levels higher? There's no skill to be learned of understanding how your character spells work and interact with each other? It may feel as something completely natural for you, sure, but again, there're people out there that haven't even leveled yet a character in World of Warcraft, and for those it won't be that simple.

The game does do a much better job at explaining what a class does and what a player should focus on and this is very good for completely new players. The problem is that once a player has come to grips with a class, over say 20 levels, they then face another 60 odd levels where there is no escalation in challenge at all and no choice to take on extra challenge unless one goes down the line of gimping oneself. So called artificial challenges.

Then when said new player gets to 90 and tries their hand at normal or heroic raiding, they do so completely unprepared. There are multiple ways to solve this problem but saying it is beyond the scope of one of the biggest and best gaming companies in the world is beyond ridiculous.

You can't really know how challenging the leveling experience is for those new players, since your view isn't objective (neither is mine, of course, for me leveling is simple, I've been playing this game for 8 years). There were plenty of puzzled and unprepared players at level 60 as well, so we aren't talking about something new. In fact, there're creatures in the world now that will teach you basic things as getting out of the fire through those very same warnings you mentioned as "kindergarten gaming", which wasn't the case back then.

so it is true that older content has gotten easier but hasn't been nerfed, one day i opend a ticket in-game, when i got response, my first line to this GM was: what the hell happend to old content, it's pisseasy and there is no challenge in dungeons upto and including WoTLK dungs. he said nothing got nerfed down, it's because of the characters being stronger due to the new talent system, loom gear and so on. also the fact that we aren't beginners anymore, i think by now most of the players now atleast 5 classes good to raid with, rotation is easier cause we know the mechanics of the classes we choose to play.

This explains it pretty well (although I'm not sure I'd say most of the players know at least 5 classes good enough to raid with them...). The rotation isn't any easier though, it's more complex in many cases, but it is easier to understand, in my opinion.

Personally, I feel like many devs miss the distinction of making it easier for newbies through fun rather than easier challengewise. Anybody that is having fun is gonna learn the game anyway. By only catering to a reduction of challenge, you essentially shorten the game's lifespan for each player, not to mention ending up reducing the fun in the end.

Of course that's a generalization and not entirely applicable to wow in all respects, but in general, I really feel like it's a problem with today's games.

Dying 10 times (for instance) against a creature is not challenging, it's frustrating. And when you enter the realm of frustration without the possibility to do something else, it's easy to stop having fun (so, you may be frustrated because you keep wiping on a raid boss, but it's not the end of the world since there're many other things to keep you entertained elsewhere while you're still making progress). For a leveling player that suddenly finds himself/herself in that situation I described, there isn't much optional to do.

Brawler's Guild doesn't fit this profile much. I am at Rank 7 and waiting for the damn Dark Summoner Flashlight to be fixed so I can point it properly. Most of it is based on Gear, not personal skill.

You're playing a ranged character (which arguably has a better time against Dark Summoner than melee characters as the ghosts range is rather big) and you claim there isn't any challenge because the flashlight has to be fixed. And also add that it all comes down to gear, not skill. The thing is, the Dark Summoner has been killed many times already by characters of every class. So there's nothing preventing you from killing him.

Everything in that blue I quoted is FACTUALLY JUST PLAIN WRONG. PERIOD. I've seen differing opinions often before, and that's fine, but this guy literally made 5 factually incorrect statements in a single post and used that to brush the problem away.

5? Yet the only one you mention is orange quests based on the premise that since you can't get them they don't exist, when in fact it's just related to your level and therefore a game design decision to ensure that characters always get level appropriate quests. Sure, you can dislike that direction as much as you want, go for it, but dismissing a post that's clarifying something doesn't seem that helpful for the discussion, to be honest.