What I miss is the definition of 'casual' because I often find out that it means diffrent things to diffrent people.
Besides in diffrent game feature there is diffrent space for casual direction.
F.e. - making more diverse end game content f.e. not only raids for 'hardcores' sure that can be see as more casual approach or more hardcore approach - depending on how you look at ti.
Levelling and non-raid content difficulty - really is there a place here to make it more casual?
Definately not by making levelling faster and content simpler because I don't see an inch of space for that here.
Imho as potential consumer changes as loot of mmorpg consumers don't have much time to play but at the same time there still alot of new blood that can and want play long hours I certainly doubt that one game in future will be able to cater for both of those groups.
WoW certainly did try by soloification and fast levelling for casuals and raid and instace grind for 'hardcores' but that got old and I don't think you can repeat success with this approach.
Imho -deevelopers in future will have to choose his target audience , mmorpg consumer crowd got so big that it will be harder and harder to cater for all.
As a casual player, I want the journey to end level to by long and enjoyable. I want it to be challenging, so that when I reach max level I feel I accomplished something. I'd like quests to be epic in nature and either completable in an hour or broken into steps that take an hour each, so that when I need to log out, I'm not logging back in to get insta-killed by all the respawns. I'd like group dungeons to last 1-2 hours max, or at least have safe points so that when I log out and back in, I can resume the dungeon from a safe point. Same goes for raids, although I prefer raids to only be 2 groups large, since the process of gathering people for a raid takes longer the more players that are required.
As a casual player, I want the journey to end level to by long and enjoyable. I want it to be challenging, so that when I reach max level I feel I accomplished something. I'd like quests to be epic in nature and either completable in an hour or broken into steps that take an hour each, so that when I need to log out, I'm not logging back in to get insta-killed by all the respawns. I'd like group dungeons to last 1-2 hours max, or at least have safe points so that when I log out and back in, I can resume the dungeon from a safe point. Same goes for raids, although I prefer raids to only be 2 groups large, since the process of gathering people for a raid takes longer the more players that are required.
I like this as an idea. I want a game that lets me discover it over a long period of time. I don't want to reach level cap within 2 weeks. I want to log in, take a look around, kill some stuff, make some stuff, chat to some peeps, and generally be awe struck by a virtual world.
That's what I want out of my gaming experience. Something that's worth 2-3 hours of my time, which means it has to be as entertaining as watching a movie, because when it comes down to it, that's my choice. A movie, or 3 hours in a game.
A movie is worth $15, same price as a monthly sub. So the choice is based entirely on how entertained I predict myself to be. Is it a good movie? That I don't know. Is it a good game? Well after 1 month of subbing, I should know that at least.
There will always be a maket for "hardcore" MMO's, but I doubt we'll ever see one from the AAA MMO developers. Small companies just can't compete in this genre anymore. Of course, there are notable exceptions like CCP, (they're not so small anymore) but generally, small indie dev teams have quite an uphill battle in this market. Conceptually, some of the indie companies show great promise, but if you can't field the talent and resources for a project as huge as an MMO, then it can often end up being a total disaster.
We're never going to see a big-budget sanbox, for example, because they don't make as much money. We certainly won't be seeing MMO's become more hardcore. If anything, I expect that they'll continue to become more and more casual.
I don't have as much time to play as I used to but I still enjoy a deep RPG. If MMO developers believe that they have to appeal to a more casual audience to succeed they are sadly mistaken. Deep RPG games are still successful. Deep strategy games are still successful. The best FPS developers are seeing that they need involved on-line character development to succeed.
MMO developers have somehow mistaken the lack of audience for their piss-poor quality MMOs as being due to a general lack of an audience but that is not true. It's due to their terrible games not being worth playing because they've been treating them like cash cows for ten years and doing nothing innovative.
People who say that the audience is changing are wrong. There has been an influx of casual gamers so wherever there is the potential to make some easy money the money-grubbers will follow.
There will continue to be an audience for deeper and more involved MMOs. And there will continue to be MMOs that cater to us. Look at games like EVE which have incredibly deep game systems. They're there, they're better than ever and they're able to succeed because of their depth. The first MMO developer with a budget that can get their head out of their ass and realize the balance between depth and accessability will stand to make a fortune.
Of course, why would the people who stagnated the genre for 10 years want to do all that work when they can just dupe inexperienced MMO players into buying a shitty game?
There will always be a maket for "hardcore" MMO's, but I doubt we'll ever see one from the AAA MMO developers. Small companies just can't compete in this genre anymore. Of course, there are notable exceptions like CCP, (they're not so small anymore) but generally, small indie dev teams have quite an uphill battle in this market. Conceptually, some of the indie companies show great promise, but if you can't field the talent and resources for a project as huge as an MMO, then it can often end up being a total disaster.
We're never going to see a big-budget sanbox, for example, because they don't make as much money. We certainly won't be seeing MMO's become more hardcore. If anything, I expect that they'll continue to become more and more casual.
See you're completely wrong here. When a developer finally successfully combines low-level accessability with immense end-game depth they will have "the next g ame that isn't WoW" but is instead so far beyond WoW, that it is the game by which all future games will be judged.
It's waiting to be made but I don't think MMO developers will realize it for another 10 years (they learn really ****ing slow!) Honestly, MMO development is really about 10 years behind its audience.
Missing the definition of casual and hardcore. People like the op have to keep in mind, that lazy gamers often labeling themselves as casuals they really arent. They are just lazy crybabies not interested in learning tthe game or the class, screaming for balance, nerfs and whatnot. Sadly, they are also the ones polluting official forums with topic over topic so studios fall into the false sense, that this crowd would be the majority.
In reality it doesn't matter if you are a real casual or hardcore player cause lets face it. During the endless playtime hours there will be days where you play hardcore and others where you just play casually or not at all.
Studios simple need to realize that you can't make a game appealing to everyone. This is the reason so many mmorpgs failed during the so called "2 era".
Take Rift while really not a bad game, their second major patch turned expert dungeons into a joke, 1.4 introduced raidgear for badges, addons add to that the constantly buffing/nerfing of classes and you end up with ....WoW in Telara..Thats exactly not what Riftplayers where looking for, I gave up with patch 1.2 my guild fall apart one patch later.
This is just an example of what not do. Devs need to make sure whom they are targeting and stick to that crowd and for the sake of god no more official forums. Thanks to the "wider audience" they are filled with crybabies and you just arent able to have some serious discussions.
Well SWTOR will just be an interactive movie and challengwise a walk in the park. Nothing they have shown so far seems challenging or deep. No doubt it will sell but when more and more people are reaching 50 or whatever they have at maxlevel they will get bored fast, if theres nothing to do other than 1 operation. Not many people are going to reroll and reroll and reroll. Personally I expected soooooooooooooooooo much more (open world, deep crafting, real housing, skill based progression instead of levels would be more true to the lore!) from a Star Wars game its really sad.
You can't have inclusive communities and expecting them to work well, best example would be World of Warcraft. Easily the worst community of all games and why is that? Well since Kaplan left, Chilton and Street were focusing on adding the FPS crowd with stuff like Arenas and constantly dumping down of the game and there you have it....the game is losing subs cause it does not appeal to mmorpg players any longer.
The 3 era will be based about different games for different playstyles. The era of the one game for everyone mmorpgs will be coming to an end soon and heck its about time.
Why did games like Daoc, Everquest, AC and UO have such stromg communities? Well you needed other people helping you people with a bad behaviour found themselves on ignore lists, pk lists and other stuff real soon.
Titan in my mind will be as easy as Call of Duty just with a scifi setting, in other words are very dull, bland but heavily overhyped game...
We need a MMORPG Cataclysm asap, finish the dark age of MMORPGS now!
"Everything you're bitching about is wrong. People don't have the time to invest in corpse runs, impossible zones, or long winded quests. Sometimes, they just want to pop on and play." "Then maybe MMORPGs aren't for you."
From a dark corner in the smoky bar room a star ranger wearing a weathered hat and dusty overcoat looks up from his drink with a grin on his face then drifts away again into his own little world.
harcore does not mean raids. imho, it has something to do with challenge. so i could imagine a hardcore game without raids.
however i expect more casual games in the future, even more casual like wow. i hope, that there are some games coming, with more challenge, catering the hardcore niche. i agree, that these are just about 500k players. even if nobody made a real good game in the last 8 years. so it is not proven, if lots of all these new casuals would not enjoy harder games.
As a casual player, I want the journey to end level to by long and enjoyable. I want it to be challenging, so that when I reach max level I feel I accomplished something. I'd like quests to be epic in nature and either completable in an hour or broken into steps that take an hour each, so that when I need to log out, I'm not logging back in to get insta-killed by all the respawns. I'd like group dungeons to last 1-2 hours max, or at least have safe points so that when I log out and back in, I can resume the dungeon from a safe point. Same goes for raids, although I prefer raids to only be 2 groups large, since the process of gathering people for a raid takes longer the more players that are required.
I agree with most. Quests can be imho easily made to be intertresting ,complex and challenging or "epic" and made in 1 h time or easily 'broken' into parts by such easy mechanic as giving few objectives into a long quest , so you finish say 1 objective log out then log back otehr day and do second objective and thus finish quest. Just an example.
I agree with normal dungeons 1-2 h max is good.
Raids - well I am flexible here , but I could agree that most of raids be 2 groups large (liek 12 ppl f.e) , unless it is open world raid (non instanced) then it might be bigger.
I agree games need to have questing , levelling , crafting back to mean something. That you accomplished something when you have new level , new skill or finally hit level cap.
Most of what I call "casual" players don't want to race to max level in 2 weeks liek nowadays it is in Rift or WoW Cata.
Hardcore raiders levelling another alt or jumping into another game just to raid at max level want that. It is of course just my persinal opinion based on personal experiences , I don't have any objective data to support it.
The only thing I dont like is too many people think casual means simple or not challenging, even game companies, which is wrong. I want challenging content, I want fights that are different mechanics and hard to pull off, I want fights that make you think outside the holy trinity box, I just dont want them to take all day and night, a one to 2 hour raid is plenty, there is no need for 20 bosses in a raid dungeon.
Spot on. Casualization and catering to the mentally challenged are two different things.
The emphasis should be on reducing the time required to achieve goals, not on dumbing down the content to the point a blind folded 5 year old can master the game in 15 minutes.
I remember in my early MMO experiences how totally lost I was for the first couple weeks inside a new game. No idea what to do or where to start.
Well when you finally did figure out wtf was going on, you got some satisfaction out of it and a sense of achievement. You were confronted with a challenge and you managed to surpass it by using your brain, that felt good. Of course this phenomenon applied to all other facets of MMO gameplay (questing, combat, PvP, Raid encounters etc..).
That's all gone now. Take quests for instance. These days you are no longer required to know anything about the quest in order to get it done. As soon as you get a new quest, the game tells you where to go and what to kill. Where's the fun in that? There is none. Following arrows for weeks until you reach the end game is tedious and down right boring.
Yeah , agreed. Quest tracker dumbed game so much that manypeople get bored because you don't have to think during quest , you don't even have to know what quest is about , just blindly follow.
Game developers know that and lately they don't even provide enough quest description if someone turned off quest tracker , jsut see Rift quests description.
I really say trash it , throw it out it is one of worst mechanic in mmorpg history.
Dungeon finder is close second...
Second thing is difficulty of normal game mobs in open world, they have been made so easy that even if you don't know anything about your class just spam clicking worst dps skill you easily kill 2 mobs on your level , or quest boss. This is just boring.
It is not catering to causal players , I would say that this is AGAINST casual players. Becasue many casual players care more about things like questing , sometimes crafting and game developers make that experiences just worse and boring.
You want to build a strong community? Don't let people make alts, so if people troll others, they will be remembered.
Or even better, make alts from the same account like a family. For example, your account creates a family when you join a game, with a last name, let say, Sephiroth (lol :P), so all the character you create on that account has a last name , then each alt is differentiate by their first name. So even if you decided to be a jerk on one of your characters, you can't just switch to another alts and get away with it, people will remember your family and shun it , this also allows people to still have alts to enjoy different storylines (like swtor), or different classes without intrusions. Also you can have duplicate first names, no more xXxILikeCoolNamesxXx, just xXxILikeLastNamesxXx last names xD
How much WoW could a WoWhater hate, if a WoWhater could hate WoW? As much WoW as a WoWhater would, if a WoWhater could hate WoW.
Raiding being a focus in games is the one aspect of our genre that still caters to people that play all day and can revolve their life around a game schedule.
It simply doesn't work, proven by the extremely small percentage of players that even bother getting passed entry level raids at level cap.
Im sure if someone counted the players that come into mmorpgs hit level cap you would see the casuals out number the raiders 10 to 1 easily.
these are the people that should be catered to because the reason they re-roll all day is because max level offers them nothing.
I am coming to learn that WoW's gear based tredmill is actually becoming more hard core. That is the big Myth in the MMO industry. So what if it took 6 months a a year of constant grinding to reach Max level in an old school MMO. That is not nearly has hard core as those WoW guilds that Raid 4 or 5 hours a day 6 days a week. Bring back the rare spawn camp quest update that took 3 or 4 days to update. That type of gaming is way more casual than grinding instances over and over like it is second job for months on end.
The first two questions you need to ask however are:
What is the definition of "Casual", versus "Hard Core"?
If you don't establish those baseline definitions, discussion is only partially meaningful. And, I think you'll find some variance on what people think casual versus hard core is.
For instance, is someone who plays 40 hours a week hardcore while someone who plays 5 hours a week casual? (pop quiz question)
The first two questions you need to ask however are:
What is the definition of "Casual", versus "Hard Core"?
If you don't establish those baseline definitions, discussion is only partially meaningful. And, I think you'll find some variance on what people think casual versus hard core is.
For instance, is someone who plays 40 hours a week hardcore while someone who plays 5 hours a week casual? (pop quiz question)
But then you can go deeper and ask what if the person playing 40 hours a week is doing nothing but easy dungeon runs and questing, while the person playing 5 hours a week spends that 5 hours in organized events such as raids or large scale PvP.
What I hope for are seperate games for both hardcores and casuals and that developers would for crying out loud, stop trying to force us to play together and all the while giving hardcores the more involved content and the best rewards and treating casuals like second class citizens at end game, especially in games that are suppose to be casual. All of the current and upcoming crop of games claim to have target audiences, yet half the time they screw that target audience over in order to please a minority player base in their game.
I think so. First of all a company wishes to attract customers that have income to spend. That usually means that people have a job. This leads to the time issue where many dont have 4 hours every evening to play, hence a game needs somehow to attract these players. Secondly, casual players dont consume content as fast as hardcore players. This leads to the fact that casual players potentially subscribe for a much longer duration based on how long time it takes for them to go through the content. As for the hardcore players you need replayability (alts) and good endgame features. The casual player also pays the same as the hardcore player, but requires substantially less server resources and staff resources.
Putting it all together I think there are many reasons why MMO's wish to attract the casual players. And I think therefore you will find that MMOs on a general basis will try to be more available to the casual player. Though to have a successful MMO you need to have a symbiosis between the hardcore and the casual elements in my opinion.
So yeah, MMOs are in the future going to try much more to appeal to the casual players.
The first two questions you need to ask however are:
What is the definition of "Casual", versus "Hard Core"?
If you don't establish those baseline definitions, discussion is only partially meaningful. And, I think you'll find some variance on what people think casual versus hard core is.
For instance, is someone who plays 40 hours a week hardcore while someone who plays 5 hours a week casual? (pop quiz question)
But then you can go deeper and ask what if the person playing 40 hours a week is doing nothing but easy dungeon runs and questing, while the person playing 5 hours a week spends that 5 hours in organized events such as raids or large scale PvP.
That isn't going "deeper" . . . that's the point to my "pop quiz" question. Precisely.
We get into discussions like this where key terms like "casual" versus "hard core" are embedded in the body of the topic . . . yet that baseline is left to subjective vaguary across a wide audience.
So, I ask again to posters here: What do YOU identify as "casual" versus "hard core" on this topic? What identifies a player as a casual and another as hard core?
To Zolgar: It isn't going "deeper". That was the point to my pop quiz question, precisely.
We get into disussions like this on forums and key terms embedded in that discussion are all too often left to subjective vaguary across a wide audience.
So, to you reading this thread and article, what do YOU feel "casual" versus "hard core" is? What identifies one player as casual while another is hard core?
I think they will be more casual,or atleast stay as casual as they are..
Companies want to appeal to the masses and changing to a casual approach hasnt deterred the hardcore gamers from buying their product.
Plus,the gamers age demographic has been raised,people who are older have alot less time to play usually.So they'd like to just jump in for a few and play.You cant really do that if the mmo youre playing is of a difficulty level of an old school Everquest.
I started playing guildwars after 3 years of break. I liked it when it came out and I still like it now. If I had time i would play all day. It's amazing, simple and effective also very fast comparing to other MMOs. Casual its not the word to discribe GW!
IMO, there are different types of 'casual'. A good type of casual would be if a player with limited time can jump into a game and do something fun with that limited amount of time. If casual means simply speeding up the repetitive grind to get to the better gear , then it is not so good. The problem with MMOs generally is not hard core v casual but rather their complete lack of creativity in giving players things to do other than combat. I think we are very slowly moving in the direction of creating inside virtual worlds rather than simply destroying X to get Y. Games that give players more options certainly would appeal to the casual gamer and that is what devs should be aiming for.
Right now the biggest complaint is that sooner or later mmos require you to rely on other players to continue your progress.
In the future this wont be something we have to deal with.
Now before you jump all over me let me explain.
Relying on others doesnt mean grouping up.
As a casual i can queue up randomly for a dungeon or a instanced pvp map, i can join a public group for a zone event and what not.
These are ways that i can log in when i want, play with other people and still progress on my time.
Things like Raiding and fix team based ladder progression are two aspects of mmos that need to go. they require players to log in at a certain time on a schedule to do anything.
We need to move away from that. make everything PUG friendly.
Actually, I hope you're right. The more options I have available, to meet my 'then-gaming-needs', the better. There are times I just want to solo as much as possible and (fewer) times I want to look for a solid group to raid with.
When MMO's were attempting to be world simulators that was certainly the case. Now that the "mmo as world simulator" isn't where the industry currently is, much less headed towards, that is no longer the case. And to be clear I'm not saying that communities are no longer the lifeblood of mmorpg's, I'm just saying the current model of mmorpg has no lifeblood by design because that is what the industry has decided is profitable.
Comments
As a casual player, I want the journey to end level to by long and enjoyable. I want it to be challenging, so that when I reach max level I feel I accomplished something. I'd like quests to be epic in nature and either completable in an hour or broken into steps that take an hour each, so that when I need to log out, I'm not logging back in to get insta-killed by all the respawns. I'd like group dungeons to last 1-2 hours max, or at least have safe points so that when I log out and back in, I can resume the dungeon from a safe point. Same goes for raids, although I prefer raids to only be 2 groups large, since the process of gathering people for a raid takes longer the more players that are required.
I like this as an idea. I want a game that lets me discover it over a long period of time. I don't want to reach level cap within 2 weeks. I want to log in, take a look around, kill some stuff, make some stuff, chat to some peeps, and generally be awe struck by a virtual world.
That's what I want out of my gaming experience. Something that's worth 2-3 hours of my time, which means it has to be as entertaining as watching a movie, because when it comes down to it, that's my choice. A movie, or 3 hours in a game.
A movie is worth $15, same price as a monthly sub. So the choice is based entirely on how entertained I predict myself to be. Is it a good movie? That I don't know. Is it a good game? Well after 1 month of subbing, I should know that at least.
Right?
-Ian
/[email protected]
ps: My concept for a game is linked here:
http://www.space-wars.co/
There will always be a maket for "hardcore" MMO's, but I doubt we'll ever see one from the AAA MMO developers. Small companies just can't compete in this genre anymore. Of course, there are notable exceptions like CCP, (they're not so small anymore) but generally, small indie dev teams have quite an uphill battle in this market. Conceptually, some of the indie companies show great promise, but if you can't field the talent and resources for a project as huge as an MMO, then it can often end up being a total disaster.
We're never going to see a big-budget sanbox, for example, because they don't make as much money. We certainly won't be seeing MMO's become more hardcore. If anything, I expect that they'll continue to become more and more casual.
I don't have as much time to play as I used to but I still enjoy a deep RPG. If MMO developers believe that they have to appeal to a more casual audience to succeed they are sadly mistaken. Deep RPG games are still successful. Deep strategy games are still successful. The best FPS developers are seeing that they need involved on-line character development to succeed.
MMO developers have somehow mistaken the lack of audience for their piss-poor quality MMOs as being due to a general lack of an audience but that is not true. It's due to their terrible games not being worth playing because they've been treating them like cash cows for ten years and doing nothing innovative.
People who say that the audience is changing are wrong. There has been an influx of casual gamers so wherever there is the potential to make some easy money the money-grubbers will follow.
There will continue to be an audience for deeper and more involved MMOs. And there will continue to be MMOs that cater to us. Look at games like EVE which have incredibly deep game systems. They're there, they're better than ever and they're able to succeed because of their depth. The first MMO developer with a budget that can get their head out of their ass and realize the balance between depth and accessability will stand to make a fortune.
Of course, why would the people who stagnated the genre for 10 years want to do all that work when they can just dupe inexperienced MMO players into buying a shitty game?
See you're completely wrong here. When a developer finally successfully combines low-level accessability with immense end-game depth they will have "the next g ame that isn't WoW" but is instead so far beyond WoW, that it is the game by which all future games will be judged.
It's waiting to be made but I don't think MMO developers will realize it for another 10 years (they learn really ****ing slow!) Honestly, MMO development is really about 10 years behind its audience.
Missing the definition of casual and hardcore. People like the op have to keep in mind, that lazy gamers often labeling themselves as casuals they really arent. They are just lazy crybabies not interested in learning tthe game or the class, screaming for balance, nerfs and whatnot. Sadly, they are also the ones polluting official forums with topic over topic so studios fall into the false sense, that this crowd would be the majority.
In reality it doesn't matter if you are a real casual or hardcore player cause lets face it. During the endless playtime hours there will be days where you play hardcore and others where you just play casually or not at all.
Studios simple need to realize that you can't make a game appealing to everyone. This is the reason so many mmorpgs failed during the so called "2 era".
Take Rift while really not a bad game, their second major patch turned expert dungeons into a joke, 1.4 introduced raidgear for badges, addons add to that the constantly buffing/nerfing of classes and you end up with ....WoW in Telara..Thats exactly not what Riftplayers where looking for, I gave up with patch 1.2 my guild fall apart one patch later.
This is just an example of what not do. Devs need to make sure whom they are targeting and stick to that crowd and for the sake of god no more official forums. Thanks to the "wider audience" they are filled with crybabies and you just arent able to have some serious discussions.
Well SWTOR will just be an interactive movie and challengwise a walk in the park. Nothing they have shown so far seems challenging or deep. No doubt it will sell but when more and more people are reaching 50 or whatever they have at maxlevel they will get bored fast, if theres nothing to do other than 1 operation. Not many people are going to reroll and reroll and reroll. Personally I expected soooooooooooooooooo much more (open world, deep crafting, real housing, skill based progression instead of levels would be more true to the lore!) from a Star Wars game its really sad.
You can't have inclusive communities and expecting them to work well, best example would be World of Warcraft. Easily the worst community of all games and why is that? Well since Kaplan left, Chilton and Street were focusing on adding the FPS crowd with stuff like Arenas and constantly dumping down of the game and there you have it....the game is losing subs cause it does not appeal to mmorpg players any longer.
The 3 era will be based about different games for different playstyles. The era of the one game for everyone mmorpgs will be coming to an end soon and heck its about time.
Why did games like Daoc, Everquest, AC and UO have such stromg communities? Well you needed other people helping you people with a bad behaviour found themselves on ignore lists, pk lists and other stuff real soon.
Titan in my mind will be as easy as Call of Duty just with a scifi setting, in other words are very dull, bland but heavily overhyped game...
We need a MMORPG Cataclysm asap, finish the dark age of MMORPGS now!
"Everything you're bitching about is wrong. People don't have the time to invest in corpse runs, impossible zones, or long winded quests. Sometimes, they just want to pop on and play."
"Then maybe MMORPGs aren't for you."
From a dark corner in the smoky bar room a star ranger wearing a weathered hat and dusty overcoat looks up from his drink with a grin on his face then drifts away again into his own little world.
Godspeed my fellow gamer
harcore does not mean raids. imho, it has something to do with challenge. so i could imagine a hardcore game without raids.
however i expect more casual games in the future, even more casual like wow. i hope, that there are some games coming, with more challenge, catering the hardcore niche. i agree, that these are just about 500k players. even if nobody made a real good game in the last 8 years. so it is not proven, if lots of all these new casuals would not enjoy harder games.
played: Everquest I (6 years), EVE (3 years)
months: EQII, Vanguard, Siedler Online, SWTOR, Guild Wars 2
weeks: WoW, Shaiya, Darkfall, Florensia, Entropia, Aion, Lotro, Fallen Earth, Uncharted Waters
days: DDO, RoM, FFXIV, STO, Atlantica, PotBS, Maestia, WAR, AoC, Gods&Heroes, Cultures, RIFT, Forsaken World, Allodds
I agree with most. Quests can be imho easily made to be intertresting ,complex and challenging or "epic" and made in 1 h time or easily 'broken' into parts by such easy mechanic as giving few objectives into a long quest , so you finish say 1 objective log out then log back otehr day and do second objective and thus finish quest. Just an example.
I agree with normal dungeons 1-2 h max is good.
Raids - well I am flexible here , but I could agree that most of raids be 2 groups large (liek 12 ppl f.e) , unless it is open world raid (non instanced) then it might be bigger.
I agree games need to have questing , levelling , crafting back to mean something. That you accomplished something when you have new level , new skill or finally hit level cap.
Most of what I call "casual" players don't want to race to max level in 2 weeks liek nowadays it is in Rift or WoW Cata.
Hardcore raiders levelling another alt or jumping into another game just to raid at max level want that. It is of course just my persinal opinion based on personal experiences , I don't have any objective data to support it.
Yeah , agreed. Quest tracker dumbed game so much that manypeople get bored because you don't have to think during quest , you don't even have to know what quest is about , just blindly follow.
Game developers know that and lately they don't even provide enough quest description if someone turned off quest tracker , jsut see Rift quests description.
I really say trash it , throw it out it is one of worst mechanic in mmorpg history.
Dungeon finder is close second...
Second thing is difficulty of normal game mobs in open world, they have been made so easy that even if you don't know anything about your class just spam clicking worst dps skill you easily kill 2 mobs on your level , or quest boss. This is just boring.
It is not catering to causal players , I would say that this is AGAINST casual players. Becasue many casual players care more about things like questing , sometimes crafting and game developers make that experiences just worse and boring.
You want to build a strong community? Don't let people make alts, so if people troll others, they will be remembered.
Or even better, make alts from the same account like a family. For example, your account creates a family when you join a game, with a last name, let say, Sephiroth (lol :P), so all the character you create on that account has a last name , then each alt is differentiate by their first name. So even if you decided to be a jerk on one of your characters, you can't just switch to another alts and get away with it, people will remember your family and shun it
, this also allows people to still have alts to enjoy different storylines (like swtor), or different classes without intrusions. Also you can have duplicate first names, no more xXxILikeCoolNamesxXx, just xXxILikeLastNamesxXx last names xD
How much WoW could a WoWhater hate, if a WoWhater could hate WoW?
As much WoW as a WoWhater would, if a WoWhater could hate WoW.
Raiding needs to be deleted in its current form.
Raiding being a focus in games is the one aspect of our genre that still caters to people that play all day and can revolve their life around a game schedule.
It simply doesn't work, proven by the extremely small percentage of players that even bother getting passed entry level raids at level cap.
Im sure if someone counted the players that come into mmorpgs hit level cap you would see the casuals out number the raiders 10 to 1 easily.
these are the people that should be catered to because the reason they re-roll all day is because max level offers them nothing.
Playing: Nothing
Looking forward to: Nothing
I am coming to learn that WoW's gear based tredmill is actually becoming more hard core. That is the big Myth in the MMO industry. So what if it took 6 months a a year of constant grinding to reach Max level in an old school MMO. That is not nearly has hard core as those WoW guilds that Raid 4 or 5 hours a day 6 days a week. Bring back the rare spawn camp quest update that took 3 or 4 days to update. That type of gaming is way more casual than grinding instances over and over like it is second job for months on end.
The first two questions you need to ask however are:
What is the definition of "Casual", versus "Hard Core"?
If you don't establish those baseline definitions, discussion is only partially meaningful. And, I think you'll find some variance on what people think casual versus hard core is.
For instance, is someone who plays 40 hours a week hardcore while someone who plays 5 hours a week casual? (pop quiz question)
Wherever you go, there you are.
But then you can go deeper and ask what if the person playing 40 hours a week is doing nothing but easy dungeon runs and questing, while the person playing 5 hours a week spends that 5 hours in organized events such as raids or large scale PvP.
0118 999 881 999 119 725... 3
What I hope for are seperate games for both hardcores and casuals and that developers would for crying out loud, stop trying to force us to play together and all the while giving hardcores the more involved content and the best rewards and treating casuals like second class citizens at end game, especially in games that are suppose to be casual. All of the current and upcoming crop of games claim to have target audiences, yet half the time they screw that target audience over in order to please a minority player base in their game.
Are MMOs going to get more casual?
I think so. First of all a company wishes to attract customers that have income to spend. That usually means that people have a job. This leads to the time issue where many dont have 4 hours every evening to play, hence a game needs somehow to attract these players. Secondly, casual players dont consume content as fast as hardcore players. This leads to the fact that casual players potentially subscribe for a much longer duration based on how long time it takes for them to go through the content. As for the hardcore players you need replayability (alts) and good endgame features. The casual player also pays the same as the hardcore player, but requires substantially less server resources and staff resources.
Putting it all together I think there are many reasons why MMO's wish to attract the casual players. And I think therefore you will find that MMOs on a general basis will try to be more available to the casual player. Though to have a successful MMO you need to have a symbiosis between the hardcore and the casual elements in my opinion.
So yeah, MMOs are in the future going to try much more to appeal to the casual players.
Wherever you go, there you are.
Sigh. interface screw up on my part.
To Zolgar: It isn't going "deeper". That was the point to my pop quiz question, precisely.
We get into disussions like this on forums and key terms embedded in that discussion are all too often left to subjective vaguary across a wide audience.
So, to you reading this thread and article, what do YOU feel "casual" versus "hard core" is? What identifies one player as casual while another is hard core?
Wherever you go, there you are.
I think they will be more casual,or atleast stay as casual as they are..
Companies want to appeal to the masses and changing to a casual approach hasnt deterred the hardcore gamers from buying their product.
Plus,the gamers age demographic has been raised,people who are older have alot less time to play usually.So they'd like to just jump in for a few and play.You cant really do that if the mmo youre playing is of a difficulty level of an old school Everquest.
I started playing guildwars after 3 years of break. I liked it when it came out and I still like it now. If I had time i would play all day. It's amazing, simple and effective also very fast comparing to other MMOs. Casual its not the word to discribe GW!
IMO, there are different types of 'casual'. A good type of casual would be if a player with limited time can jump into a game and do something fun with that limited amount of time. If casual means simply speeding up the repetitive grind to get to the better gear , then it is not so good. The problem with MMOs generally is not hard core v casual but rather their complete lack of creativity in giving players things to do other than combat. I think we are very slowly moving in the direction of creating inside virtual worlds rather than simply destroying X to get Y. Games that give players more options certainly would appeal to the casual gamer and that is what devs should be aiming for.
Actually, I hope you're right. The more options I have available, to meet my 'then-gaming-needs', the better. There are times I just want to solo as much as possible and (fewer) times I want to look for a solid group to raid with.
they've been getting more casual since 2006.
"strong communities are the lifeblood of MMORPGs"
When MMO's were attempting to be world simulators that was certainly the case. Now that the "mmo as world simulator" isn't where the industry currently is, much less headed towards, that is no longer the case. And to be clear I'm not saying that communities are no longer the lifeblood of mmorpg's, I'm just saying the current model of mmorpg has no lifeblood by design because that is what the industry has decided is profitable.