It kind of bothers me how much people seem to genuinely want to complicate matters, but perhaps it's my own fault and I should be as clear and precise as possible in my topic..
I said 1 hour for casual and a bunch more hours for hardcore. So now let's just make that the only variable. Don't add more variables. Don't say "what if the casual just goofs off and the hardcore is a serious player." Don't say "what if the hardcore is way more skilled and the casual is stupid and will not learn things deeply."
Make them both EQUAL. The only difference is one devotes an hour a day and the other many hours. Given that and only that, over a long period of time what do you think should be the power difference if any? And to be even more clear, now I'm only talking about stats and gear.
I heard one person say 10-20%. Sound good or no? Perhaps only for pve or should pvp have power difference too?
Edit: Weird, just realized I have 2 accounts and just logged in as the one I had forgotten about.
It kind of bothers me how much people seem to genuinely want to complicate matters, but perhaps it's my own fault and I should be as clear and precise as possible in my topic..
I said 1 hour for casual and a bunch more hours for hardcore. So now let's just make that the only variable. Don't add more variables. Don't say "what if the casual just goofs off and the hardcore is a serious player." Don't say "what if the hardcore is way more skilled and the casual is stupid and will not learn things deeply."
Make them both EQUAL. The only difference is one devotes an hour a day and the other many hours. Given that and only that, over a long period of time what do you think should be the power difference if any? And to be even more clear, now I'm only talking about stats and gear.
I heard one person say 10-20%. Sound good or no? Perhaps only for pve or should pvp have power difference too?
Edit: Weird, just realized I have 2 accounts and just logged in as the one I had forgotten about.
Even with all other factors being equal, the difference between the hardcore and casual player is going to come down to the RNG. The player that puts in more time will have more *opportunities* for the RNG to favor them -- rare drops off of rare mobs or winning a random loot roll, skill-ups, etc. So, the casual player that gets lucky might get 2 drops in their single hour of playing, and the hardcore player could get a bad streak and end up with 0 drops in 6+ hours.
But generally, the only real difference is that the hardcore player will generally have a better knowledge of the game -- the systems, the mechanics, the in-game locations, the opponents, etc. This often means the hardcore player simply has a better knowledge of the various spoiler sites and other references to improve their game play rather than any physical 'skill' (perception, reaction times, precision, etc.)
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
It kind of bothers me how much people seem to genuinely want to complicate matters, but perhaps it's my own fault and I should be as clear and precise as possible in my topic..
I said 1 hour for casual and a bunch more hours for hardcore. So now let's just make that the only variable. Don't add more variables. Don't say "what if the casual just goofs off and the hardcore is a serious player." Don't say "what if the hardcore is way more skilled and the casual is stupid and will not learn things deeply."
Make them both EQUAL. The only difference is one devotes an hour a day and the other many hours. Given that and only that, over a long period of time what do you think should be the power difference if any? And to be even more clear, now I'm only talking about stats and gear.
I heard one person say 10-20%. Sound good or no? Perhaps only for pve or should pvp have power difference too?
Edit: Weird, just realized I have 2 accounts and just logged in as the one I had forgotten about.
Depends on the game.
Lets say, all factors equal.
And just for the sake of discussion, Let's say they both invest into 1 character, And the game is designed around the idea of having 1 character as a mian. (Like FFXIV, for example)
I mean, ideally under that situation, the gap should continue to grow the longer they both play the game.
Case in point, if one player has 100 hours, and the other player has 400, (100 days in, or roughly 3 months) it stands to reason that they should have a noticeable power disparity.
However, when you get to the point that the players are at where one player with 1000 hours and another with 4000 hours (3 years into the game) there should be a vastly noticeable power disparity to reflect that 4x effort and time the "hardcore" player put in.
In PVP games, the thing is, no one is going to invest 4x the hours to have no direct power increment to show for it.
In a PvE game, players will, because they can show their time investment in other ways, often having massively more wealth for example.
So that would also need to be a part of the game that the Dev's need to look into.
Keep in mind, it still depends on the game, some games, it does not matter how many hours you put in, everyone is equal, like Fortnight for example.
But, in an MMO, progress is often seen as King.
Egotism is the anesthetic that dullens the pain of stupidity, this is why when I try to beat my head against the stupidity of other people, I only hurt myself.
I think trying to label them hardcore and casual is where the fallacy lies. Can a hardcore player be hardcore with only 1 hour played each day? Can a casual player play more than 1 hour?
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse. - FARGIN_WAR
I think people are categorizing hardcore and casual incorrectly. Personally, I feel the difference between the two is skill, not time investment. Back in the day, people could technically do the activities within an hour. The real problem was finding people skilled enough to clear said content, which of course could take a lot of time. The real problem with many MMORPGs today is that the 'time investment' has shifted from waiting on skilled players to more dredging through arbitrary systems in order to get 'strong enough' numerically to do content.
There is also something else that modern content lacks in most mmorpgs that I feel is more important, which is visual motivation and by this I mean exclusive content. Right now, every piece of content in games like WoW/FFXIV/ESO etc are visually the same except for maybe the 'last raid boss of a tier' that might have an extra phase. If you're seeing the same thing on the lowest difficult as you are on the hardest, for many people, there's no point in pushing. Couple that with predictable time-tables of when content is just made irrelevant other than just for vanity, if someone hits a 'wall' there's no motivation to push past when they could just wait until they get passively stronger because of game scaling.
To put it short and sweet, even in games, people need motivation and a lot of times people don't know what they motivation should be. In the past, developers/publishers were pushing for more than just dollars, they were pushing to make worlds that reflected on what they wanted things to be. This is still true in games like FFXIV and WoW but unfortunately, the worlds they want to create are just those of literal themeparks with rides just to ride and nothing to personally tie you to the worlds created. Games need to be created by gamers again, not by people will silver plated kitchen nobs that play mobile style games on the go (its been years now but I still can't believe Yoshida wore one of those....).
I tend to think these discussions are dead ends because they mostly ignore how knowledge leads to the same problems. Ihn my eyes, these understandings are existing on the surface.
the discussion have to go deeper. what has to be addressed is how gaps are treated, or managed, not whether the gaps are coming from stats or pure knowledge.
so basically i tihnk good games address gaps well, by either exclusion or innovative ways to allow new players and veterans to play togehter in the same space with minimal gap problems.
A gap probelm is like what happens whne someone who's played something for years is suddenly grouped with a noob and has to constantly tutor them, but quickly loses itnerest because they're not being challenged and they're not playing the game to be a tutor. A solution to this gap might be to group similar aptitudes together, so noobs will tend to be grouped wiht noobs and veterans will be grouped with veterans. However, a better system is to allow veterans to be tutors if they wnat to, and to ocassinally have newly made content utilizing new mechanics so noobs and veterans are on equal footing. There might be many ways to resolve this problem, and it has many forms.
Knowlege can make a big difference. I always go back to an asteroid game I played from the Allegro SDK. Everything was twitch based mostly, and survival hinged largely on my ability to maneuver without dying. When I first started palying, I could only handle a handful of asteroids without dying. It was aggravating. I got quite angry at times and would quit for stretches of time. Even on the early stages, I couldn't imagine survivong on the later ones. But I wnet much, much further than that. I wouldn't stop. After playing for a couple dozen hours over many days, I was able to handle a screenfull of asteroids. That's massive. A massive difference. That. Is. A. Gap. If I ever saw one, unfold right in front of my disbelieving eyes.
Knowledge has a huge impact. It's the same kind of impact too. You can't ignore it unless you exclude it somehow. And the development tactics I think might not be muc different when it's all said and don.
Recenlty I watched this, and it's strongly reminding me of this topic. Watch it, you might understand where I'm coming from:
As a continuation of my last post, one example for countering knowledge-sourced gaps in MP FPS games is partial autoaiming or aim assist. Aiming manually can be learned, but it signficantly increases the learning curve, especially in the first several hours whne players are most likely to quit. A large section of gamers quit games early, so adding something like this to counter a gap in a pvp environment is very effective to retaining new players.
Gaps are gaps, be them stats or knowedge (natural learning). In any kind of social interaction, like pvp or gropuing, these gaps present challenges to effective interaction. The more you increase the amount of things players need to learn naturally to reach their maximum power, the more you increase the gap and introduce roadblocks in interaction. The same is true if you increasingly boost stats without heeding the gap it's creating.
To answer the OP, how much better should a hardcore player be than a noob, including contribution of stats AND natural learning (knowledge)? Some people like to be matched up against a superior foe. Some prefer to grief a weaker opponent. Some want it evenly matched. Some would probably rather be fightning an npc. How much a player is willing to overcome to become good at a game varies, but is probably tied to their playtime. How much time are they able to devote to gaming? If they have a lot of time, they're probably more willing to take on bigger challenges, and thus bigger gaps. However, personality or other psychological quirks might also alter the outcome when faced with a superior foe (a gap). Suffice to say, I think the overwhelming majority of pvp and social mmo games have shown us players don't like big gaps, and designers are increasingly addressing the dislike by shrinking the gaps in all social games.
I don't think gaps are only the domain of social games, even though social games are more frequently teh topic of discussion, like mmo's. Even in single player games gaps are seen when faced with formidable foes, or with unbeatable foes. I think survival games are popular for people who like to be faced with bigger gaps. Also some players will play permadeath (iron man) modes in different games. Or they'll icnrease difficulty in SP games to high levels. Some players like non-scaled RPG worlds because large gaps in different content is favored--maybe it's tied to immersion seeking.
In social enviornments, I think it's veyr rare for players to desire large gaps. Maybe a big reason is why, at least in pvp settings, is because players are more non-linear, or more unprectable than scripted enemies. Players will also utilize disgusting methods to win, like cheating, ninja kills and even hacking forum accounts. Players do not want to always follow the rules like NPCs will. We have to look at games like Mortal Online or Shadowbane or Darkfall or other open world PvP games with FFA and large gaps to see how rare it's. These kinds of MMO's usually receive large hype and start with enthusiastic populations, but their ultimate appeal reduces to a trickle, revealing the truth it's an extremely marginal population of players that desires large gaps in a pvp environment.
Grpouing is social, but it's not pvp. It's not always easy to find the perfect group with the perfect levels. Players vary. Some players are rude or don't follow along. Many players prefer only to play with friends or guildmates. Some players are doing a different quest, or a differnet route. Many players will afk a lot too because of RL. Even instant group finders suffer the "Group with a random person and then never see them again." With NPC scaling becoming popular, it's no surprise players would be scaled to match each others levels in group finders, even if their real level is very different. This however still presents challenges, since a veteran might not want to play with relatively new player, and the content itself might be geared for more experienced players, or conversely noobs, so ultimately displeasing someone. It all seems to boil down to the dynamic nature of players. They're not NPCs and easily altered. This, I think, is the reason gaps are more troublesome in social games. It's easy to change stats for destination, but changing a person's brain isn't.
Lightweight multiplayer resolves a lot of it. It's not meant to ber played longterm. This wya it avoids many of the hassles of gaps. Perhaps longterm games can be geared more towardsa aesthetic goals, or community forming (like chat channels from 20 years ago where everyone visited in the evening to chat and everyone kenw each other), or just play8ing the game differently, but not better. This would be even more effective if differnet classes weren't necessary or better for given situations. This would prevent longterm players from gainiing advantages knowing whneb and where to dynamically respecc or hop onto an alt.
Comments
I said 1 hour for casual and a bunch more hours for hardcore. So now let's just make that the only variable. Don't add more variables. Don't say "what if the casual just goofs off and the hardcore is a serious player." Don't say "what if the hardcore is way more skilled and the casual is stupid and will not learn things deeply."
Make them both EQUAL. The only difference is one devotes an hour a day and the other many hours. Given that and only that, over a long period of time what do you think should be the power difference if any? And to be even more clear, now I'm only talking about stats and gear.
I heard one person say 10-20%. Sound good or no? Perhaps only for pve or should pvp have power difference too?
Edit: Weird, just realized I have 2 accounts and just logged in as the one I had forgotten about.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
Lets say, all factors equal.
And just for the sake of discussion, Let's say they both invest into 1 character, And the game is designed around the idea of having 1 character as a mian. (Like FFXIV, for example)
I mean, ideally under that situation, the gap should continue to grow the longer they both play the game.
Case in point, if one player has 100 hours, and the other player has 400, (100 days in, or roughly 3 months) it stands to reason that they should have a noticeable power disparity.
However, when you get to the point that the players are at where one player with 1000 hours and another with 4000 hours (3 years into the game) there should be a vastly noticeable power disparity to reflect that 4x effort and time the "hardcore" player put in.
In PVP games, the thing is, no one is going to invest 4x the hours to have no direct power increment to show for it.
In a PvE game, players will, because they can show their time investment in other ways, often having massively more wealth for example.
So that would also need to be a part of the game that the Dev's need to look into.
Keep in mind, it still depends on the game, some games, it does not matter how many hours you put in, everyone is equal, like Fortnight for example.
But, in an MMO, progress is often seen as King.
I think trying to label them hardcore and casual is where the fallacy lies. Can a hardcore player be hardcore with only 1 hour played each day? Can a casual player play more than 1 hour?
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR