The Appeal of An Easy PvX MMORPG

So, I was thinking that if Ashes is Easy and not otherwise offensive to my sensibilities, I might play it for way longer than I would play an easy single player game.

A PvX MMORPG that isn't too grindy but is technically easy (or just easy for a specific type of person or group) seems like it can go one of two ways. Either the disparity between the 'naturally talented' and the 'not' keeps getting bigger and all the competition becomes similar to grinding to outpace the other 'naturally talented players', which makes it very mechanics/balance dependent...

Or basically everyone manages some level of relative success and it becomes more or less a big RP game dependent on its PvE content or roleplaying community.

Ashes isn't supposed to be easy, but within gaming, I always say that's a complex claim. The main definition of 'easy' vs 'hard' in games is 'can most people do it' because some humans are mechanical/analytic savants after a while exposed to something. Most games that get around this do it by challenging the aspect of human capability that we (so far) don't think changes easily, your working memory.

So just a random thought today. Assume Ashes turns out to be super easy for you and your group personally . So 'easy' that if it were a single player game or a single-group game, you'd probably get bored of it. Are you likely to keep playing it? In a single/smallgroup player game once you've reached the top, there's no more challenge. In an MMORPG though, you gain prestige and power within the game if you happen to find it really easy. Would you 'give that up just because it's not challenging enough?'

People who don't play MMORPGs to be challenged, a different question. Do you stop playing significantly challenging single player games even if they are otherwise fun/immersive?

I'll judge this by my current semi-burnout with Genshin. The game is piss-easy outside of a single feature, so the hardcoreness is not really one of its draws. I played it for 12++h every single day for several months on release. I was grinding every possible material in the game and exploring every nook and cranny of its world.

Later on I played only for a few hours a day, mainly because I'd explored pretty much everything already and just needed to farm up some of the rarer mats to keep up pace with any potential new characters. But I still went super hardcore on hour zero of a new patch. I'd binge it for days, if there was enough new content.

In the past few months I've not only started doing the bare minimum, but even not doing some of the newer quests as soon as they came out. This might've been pure burnout with the game or my current mental condition, considering what's happening around me, but I've definitely started playing the game less and less. BUT EVEN STILL, I explored the latest new location for 14h straight. My eyes were hurting from strain of barely blinking for minutes on end and my head was pounding from not enough sleep, but I loved the process.

So what I'm trying to say is, as long as Intrepid manage to add explorative content to the game (genshin's pace is around 2-3 months between such updates, but I think an mmo could stretch that to 6m periods) - I'd be completely content with the game. I'll spend several months just doing literally everything I can in the game. Then months on alts of different professions (and quests, if they differ per race/class). And I'll obviously have all the pvp content I could get too. In other words, I doubt the difficulty of content would dissuade me from playing the game.

And on top of all of that, a party-based pvp game with guilds provides endless difficulty imo. You'll just need to be ready to adapt to it. The pvp has become too easy for your guild because you're overgeared and have 300 people on your side? Reduce the number of members and try again. Still easy? Reduce it again until you're challenged. STILL EASY? Move half of your overgeared mates into the enemy's ranks and try again. If by now you're still managing to beat your opponents so easily that you're getting bored - I think it'd be time to limit yourself to either solo play against hundreds of people or, indeed, find a better-designed game, cause ooh boi would I think Ashes has shitty balancing if a single group of people can overwhelm a full guild of equally-gear players.

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Yes, therefore I say 'easy for you personally'.

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This is quite clearly expressed, but not what I'm referring to. I'd appreciate any input on how to potentially edit the OP so that it's clearer that it's not what I'm referring to.

@JamesSunderland - please feel free to consider it through the lens of 'finding the PvP easy also' as this is a meaningful possibility, and as you noted, if you happened to be one who found it easy, the gap would potentially extend to make it even easier.

@Ace1234 - For you, similarly, please assume that everyone starts at the same time, and in this 'random scenario', you happen to immediately BE the top player in PvP and PvE with your own natural playtime and skill. Would the fact that it was easy for you to maintain top position naturally, then influence your will to continue?

@NiKr - Clarify for me, I believe that you are one of those people who does not make the distinction between 'challenging' and 'mathematically impossible' for games, right? For example, 'winning a fight in Monster Hunter without ever taking damage' is 'challenging' but it 'caps', you can do it different WAYS and maybe take more risks, but you could get to the point where the only way to 'fail the challenge' would be to do so intentionally.

Similarly, defeating the monster during a time limit using a weaker-than-intended weapon for its tier is challenging right up until the point where you downgrade to a weapon type where your DPS is too low for it to be POSSIBLE, but at that point, your skill can no longer be improved. I believe my data indicates that you either 'don't think about this' or kinda 'don't believe in it' and I'd like to frame your answer correctly.

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Thank you, I'll change the OP to say 'you and your group'.

Azherae wrote: »

NiKr - Clarify for me, I believe that you are one of those people who does not make the distinction between 'challenging' and 'mathematically impossible' for games, right? For example, 'winning a fight in Monster Hunter without ever taking damage' is 'challenging' but it 'caps', you can do it different WAYS and maybe take more risks, but you could get to the point where the only way to 'fail the challenge' would be to do so intentionally.

Similarly, defeating the monster during a time limit using a weaker-than-intended weapon for its tier is challenging right up until the point where you downgrade to a weapon type where your DPS is too low for it to be POSSIBLE, but at that point, your skill can no longer be improved. I believe my data indicates that you either 'don't think about this' or kinda 'don't believe in it' and I'd like to frame your answer correctly.

Yep, pretty much. I wouldn't really care about the difficulty along the way to my initial goal (right that being 100% exploration of the world, pretty much all possible quests, and as good a gear as I could get along the way, including any potential guild/party-related content).

Getting to that goal might get super hard at times, which would just require me to "git gud" until I win. In the context of literally all the content in the game being easy for me to clear (including all the guild stuff) - I'd start PvPing against harder and harder enemies. And just as James said, I'd just start going on 1xX attacks to make it more challenging. And if it's truly impossible to win against a party as a solo player - that's where the fun for me would be. And if I happen to burn out of those attempts - I can always just make the game easier by partying up.

In other words, I'll play the true sandbox part of the game after I'm finished with the themepark part. And the only "rules" in the sandbox are the ones you impose on yourself. And I like those rules to be as dumb as possible

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That's useful information in a way, but without getting too much into a debate on 'what is difficulty', as I was saying to NiKr, this hits a cap.

There's 'I have made this more challenging' and there's "I have made this impossible/entirely RNG dependent".

I am not one of those lucky people who can 'attempt to do a known impossible thing and derive joy from failing at it'. The joy is knowing that I COULD win if I did it perfectly. Once I can do it perfectly, that's it, and depending on the game's complexity, PvE and sometimes PvP can just be 'done perfectly'.

When there is nothing you could do better, I'd hope you were winning or that your opponent was in the same boat at which point the Balance Team or the RNG is the one deciding the outcome. Because of the way I experience games, to me this still counts as 'easy', I'm just spending my time doing something easy and still losing.

I know NiKr can enjoy this for some reason, James might have been implying the opposite. What about you? If you can play perfectly against a boss, and the difference is that if you take off half your armor you lose and if you don't you win (even considering that you have to change strategy when you take off the armor, but you still are playing perfectly relative to half-armor), is this more challenging and THEREFORE more fun/engaging? When you get good enough at half-armor do you take off all but one piece?

At some point it becomes impossible to do even when playing perfectly because this is an MMORPG. The gear is part of the point. Taking the gear off is explicitly 'not playing well' in many cases. Taking less people than intended to a fight is a challenge but you can only lower that number to one. But I'm still asking, I guess, do you personally enjoy that anyway, or even 'think that people who are not challenged should generally just spend their time attempting to do that which might be actually impossible with handicaps'?

Can't say you'd be wrong, after all, that's just 'the difference between me and NiKr'.

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For your data then, I'm treating this as a very 'roundabout' assent of situation #2 "It becomes an RP game".

Oversimplifying of course. I have been noticing lately that this is a good way to get some decent 'mass appeal' into an MMO without making it too hard. It's hard to fault the formula being used too much, but since Ashes is specifically trying to be at least a little different than the standard "Easy game for casuals! PvP Optional sections for Competitives! Throw in some good story for people who find it too easy!", I wondered what would happen if they tried to keep the first part of it.

Grati pur data.

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Grati, but the question is more specifically about 'an easy game that's easy to play'.

Take James' example in this case. L2, as I understand it, is not a terribly 'hard' game, from the perspective of control system.

And it's possible that around your Node in Ashes, no strong PvP players appear, no alternate Guild forms. You're just 'allowed to be the Champion Warlord Regent of The Jundark', in the sense that no one would dare challenge you even in 1v3 because they would STILL lose due to your superior skill and gear.

Now that you are unchallenged (not in the sense that no one ever attacks you, but no one ever wins and it isn't terribly hard to beat them) politically, in personal combat, and possibly by the PvE targets...

Will you keep playing the game just because you ARE currently 'Champion Warlord Regent Of The Jundark', or will you diminish your attention in search of a challenge in another game?

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Would it be fair to say that you don't care how 'low' the challenge rating drops for games?

I believe that a person can still have fun choosing a character style, performing the actions for that character style to live out the class fantasy of it, and still entirely enjoy it, so I am not surprised, but I want to make sure I don't misunderstand you.

A single player or small group game, that still counts as an RPG because you have chosen a way of existence/role within the group/game world, but that contains minimal challenge of ANY kind and basically tells you the story of the character like a book and you occasionally press a button to confirm or start an event...

This can hold your attention too, you don't find yourself 'wishing that the game were more challenging', right?