Kirun
Buzzfeed Editor
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I pretty much jerk off to Elden Ring. I've mentioned it multiple times as the greatest game of all time, and I constantly use it as the prime example of how to create genuine difficulty without making the game feel unfair or needlessly wasting the player's time.
I enjoy plenty of different things. My criticism of MnM isn't that I hate old-school MMO design or that I need everything to be easy. It's that I recognize the patterns in the genre.
A lot of what we're seeing with MnM feels like taking the friction of 1999-era MMOs (slow progression, limited spawns, downtime, corpse runs, forced grouping, travel friction, etc.)and treating that friction itself as the thing that made those games great. But there's a huge difference between a mechanic creating meaningful decisions, cooperation, mastery, or tension and a mechanic simply consuming more of the player's time.
Maybe they'll prove me wrong. I genuinely hope they do. But so far, I’m not seeing much that suggests they're actually breaking those patterns or fundamentally rethinking them. I’m seeing a lot of familiar MMO friction being presented as though the friction itself is the innovation.
That's why I keep bringing up Elden Ring. It proves you can make a game brutally difficult, demand mastery, punish mistakes, and create meaningful friction without confusing wasted time with meaningful difficulty.
