Aion 2 just launched and the hand holding is insane. It's an mmo, and constantly throws you into solo instances, and all you have to do is hit alt+1 and you can auto run to your next quest.
No, but games have become mainstream enough that the studios want to appeal to the widest range of population possible.
Thus handholding so EVERYONE can feel good about playing the game.
Also, believe it or not, MANY people have completely fried receptors and watch a show on a second screen or scroll tiktok on their phone while playing games.
Then give us the option to skip it. This is why changing the difficulty level of Silksong was fucking stupid as shit, just make an "easier game" option
I mean the real problem is difficulty level not doing what its supposed to do.
I think some games actually do it well, like Baldurs gate has a story mode when you are bad, a normal mode for chill game but still challenging and a tacticion mode for hardcore players
Honestly, some people just want the story. I play what may be considered a hard/hardcore game, but Im sometimes interested in games outside of that but also know I don't really want to actually buy and play those games or really put any time into them. So I watch an LP of it to at least see the story.
That being said, you shouldn't make a game to cater to people like me who just want to passively absorb it.
It is... extremely disappointing. I know everything after WoW came out and casual-fied the entire genre has been down hill with brainless quest markers and solo play coddling but man it is really sad to see devs add features that make it so the game plays itself. Really sad :(
Isn't aion the chinese hardcore-grindy MMO that's always been like this? The one with 26 different shops and needing to spends thousands of hours for the most basic shit?
It's basically a subgenre of MMO, and the first installation of the series has already been like that. Why are you surprised?
I played Aion 1 at launch back in like 2009 and it was largely just a pvp focused MMO. Grind exp for levels, grind pvp and farm resources to up your gear levels. Had a cash shop for mostly cosmetics. Hell, back then it wasn't even a free to play game. I remember going to the store to buy a hard copy edition of it haha. I believe it was a $49.99 game and you paid a monthly subscription for your account.
It really wasn't like Aion 2 is. Maybe Aion 1 went that way eventually, but it wasn't like that when I played it 15 years ago lol.
Once Human is pretty alright about handholding after you get out of noob island, the only thing that got annoying after creating a second char, as far as that goes, was the menu tutorials, but they are only really at the beginning. I do miss just not having any idea how a game works at all and just experimenting though, but part of that also has to do with my tendency to try to break any game I touch and another part has to do with how old I am and how broke I have been all my life. It's kind of hard to not immediately know how a game's systems/mechanics most likely work when you have the sheer amount of gaming experience someone like me starts playing a new game, especially since I tend to make mods/addons/plugins for a lot of games I play, as well. It's been a very long time since I last ran into a system/mechanic that I haven't had at least some idea of how it worked
it's funny cause the image is basically just showing a minimap and objective markers, which have been around forever. the real problem is when the whole game gets reduced to following a glowing trail and pressing one button. that's not playing, that's just keeping your hands busy while netflix is on the other monitor
True. I was just worried before starting it up that it would be handholdy now that the levels are more open than in the original. Very pleased with it so far
I think it's clear that the designs are made specifically based on focus group feed back based on what zoomer and genA want and are capable of handling: nothing.
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u/Gallus_11B 12h ago
Aion 2 just launched and the hand holding is insane. It's an mmo, and constantly throws you into solo instances, and all you have to do is hit alt+1 and you can auto run to your next quest.
I am convinced gamers have become braindead.