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Role Playing (Games)

MMOGs Reaching For Casual Gamers 220

Posted by Zonk from the first-president-with-an-eq-account dept.
The Guardian Gamesblog has a nice bit of commentary up today discussing the push for MMOGs to connect with casual gamers. Announcements of Massive games on the next generation of consoles have been fast and furious, but skeptics seem to feel casual gamers may not make the leap. Indeed, even veteran MMOG players have difficulty with the genre, as a recent AFKGamer column on how to deal with Grind illustrates. From the Guardian article: "Still, in order to be a viable entity on a home console unit - competing directly with the likes of GTA, Super Mario and FIFA - things will have to change. Some may call it dumbing down, but the product must be created with the consumer in mind. Personally, while I consume my fair share, I'm still only primarily interested in them from an academic perspective, as resources of human sociability in online space" Update: 07/02 05:09 GMT by Z : Gamasutra's weekly question dealt with this exact issue. The opinions of industry participants are always welcome.
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MMOGs Reaching For Casual Gamers More

MMOGs Reaching For Casual Gamers

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  • Freaking Grind (Score:4, Interesting)

    by cloudofstrife ( 887438 ) on Friday July 01, 2005 @05:26PM (#12965500)
    That's the thing about MMOGs: there's always going to be someone who is obsessed with the game and have better stuff than you, and because of that, they're going to do better. They're fun, but flawed, just like every other type of game.

    • Re:Freaking Grind (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ndansmith ( 582590 )
      Well put. I think that "casual gamer" is the polar opposite of someone who plays an MMORPG. The great thing about Madden and Super Smash Bros. is that they game only lasts a few minutes. After that you are free to enjoy the same mindless fun again, or move on. There is very little investment. But MMORPGs, you have to invest hours and hours and hours to get a decent character, and if you do not, the game will not be as fun. So I do not expect to see a great increase in MMORPG playing among casual gamer

      • Re:Freaking Grind (Score:4, Insightful)

        by killtherat ( 177924 ) on Friday July 01, 2005 @05:45PM (#12965646)
        you have to invest hours and hours and hours to get a decent character

        Maybe that's why some of the underling assumptions need to be re-thought. Is there a way to present a MMORPG in such a way that you can get in, and get some cool stuff done without worry about some 40 hr/week player coming along and kicking the stuffing out of you with is 'super special nuclear sword'.
        Obviously a game that allows for that sort of social structure isn't going to be popular among hard core gamers that like to newbie bash or fight master wizard battles.

        • Re:Freaking Grind (Score:3, Interesting)

          by nametaken ( 610866 )

          These games exist. Check out www.puzzlepirates.com

          You really don't have to CARE about someone being ranked higher than you in anything. Its just always a good time.

          Oh, and no nuclear swords... although there are plenty to choose from. :)

    • Re:Freaking Grind (Score:5, Insightful)

      by An Onerous Coward ( 222037 ) on Friday July 01, 2005 @05:53PM (#12965714) Homepage
      Not necessarily.

      Most MMORPGs use levelling and equipment as their primary rewards. It's the sort of system where time -> better character. If the goal is to provide the best experience for the casual gamer, then it seems like it would be a good idea to break that link, or at least minimize it.

      If you want to attract casual gamers, it seems like some cash bonuses are in order. For example, if you charged $1/hour up to the first twenty hours in a month, then said anything above that was free. Chances are, even a "casual gamer" is going to play for fifteen hours a month, so the financial difference isn't huge. The point is to make them feel like they're not getting too gypped by not spending their every waking hour in Azeroth.

      Now, if someone is playing an hour a night, every other day, they won't last long unless you give them something interesting to do in that hour. If just about every dungeon requires a five hour grind-a-thon to complete, that's no good. Whatever the goal of a dungeon is, there should be another path to that goal which--though harder in aggregate--can be completed in 50-90 minute chunks.

      Casual gamers are good for a company because they provide steady revenue, and they outnumber the fanatics by a huge number. But the fanatics are the ones who run the clans, maintain the websites, buy the tee shirts, and tell all their friends about teh aw3som3st g4m3 EVAAAR!!!1 So it seems to me that going the route I suggest could suck away the most enthusiastic portion of the fanbase.

      • Re:Freaking Grind (Score:3, Interesting)

        by globalar ( 669767 )
        "time -> better character"

        This seems to penetrate the entire issue. I think this is the entire problem for casual gamers. The MMORPG model is tied to accumulation, and people like gaining things - levels, items, spells, etc. It's human nature (and particularly effective for industrialized societies). But, it is not necessarily fun, just addicting. We all have addictions, but MMORPG's are not everyone's.

        This accumulation model is basically just a placeholder for real content. Multiplayer games ha
    • Anyone want to compare the grind in games that charge vs games that dont charge?

      Also, what if the server owners charged by the minute/hour/whatever [online time] rather than by the month? That could be put everyone on a more level field - it might not be as attractive to those with crazy amounts of freetime, but for the rest of us it could work out better.

      • Re:Freaking Grind (Score:5, Interesting)

        by drsquare ( 530038 ) on Friday July 01, 2005 @06:57PM (#12966136)
        No, that'd put people off playing. If you charge by the minute it's the same problem as when dial-up charged by the minute: all the time you're on you're concious of how much it's costing you. When you know the charges are adding up and you're going to get a large bill, you can't enjoy it. With a one-off cost you can play all you want and your mind's at rest.

        It's not even the amount that matters. £20/month for unlimited play means you feel a lot better about staying on for a while so you can enjoy the game more, even if the hourly charge means you pay less per month. It's the psychological aspect more than the financial aspect.

        As for making MMORPGs more enjoyable:

        1. Make the earlier levels more enjoyable. No-one likes spending weeks doing nothing but killing rabbits over and over again. Make it something interesting. A grind is never fun, it's like being at work only with no monetary reward. Find a new idea, rather than the tired old 'find mob, kill mob, loot, and repeat'. That got stale back in the 80s. Concentrate less on the graphics and more on the gameplay. If the game's fun, exciting and psychologically rewarding enough, you won't notice how good or bad the graphics are, you'll be immersed in the game no matter what. Even text-based MUDs can have more immersion than even the most technologically advanced graphical game.

        2. Find a new genre. No, you're not Tolkien. Every single game doesn't need trolls, orcs and dragons. Nor magic spells. Get some new ideas. Every other MMORPG seems to be exactly the same. It's just Diku in graphical form. The ones which stray from the genre tend to be just based on graphics with little gameplay. Eve Online for instance seems to be a game for the purpose of displaying their 'fog' technology.

        3. If you're having PK make it reasonable. You don't want high players going round killing every lowbie they find, but if you have a good situation, like a war, where each side is on different sides of the map, and PK is free across the sides but restricted on the same-side, then low level players can spend their time in and around their own cities with little danger, whilst the higher levels can go and wage war against similarly-skilled players. Of course each side can invade the other side's towns now and again, so there's always that distant vague fear that keeps the game exciting.
        You can restrict the frequency and effectiveness of the raids with the right balance of defensive mobs which keep out or disrupt small groups of raiders allowing the newbies to get away, but not too high so a large group can get in. In the MUD I used to play, it worked like this: you needed a relatively large group to conquer a town. Of course large groups didn't form very often because you needed a large number of players on one side, and as the game was international it didn't happen very often.

        4. Make the game rewarding and exciting. Killing mobs isn't exciting unless it's the first time. PK is always exciting, especially when you're unexpectedly jumped by mobs. Make the good equipment rare enough to be worth getting, so when you loot a corpse it's satisfying. I bet a lot of people can recall that feeling when you're playing a game and suddenly you find a great piece of equipment you hardly ever get. Although it can't just load in a predictable place, you need that feeling that if you get a bit of luck it could fall into your hands, if you get the right kill in the right place. That keeps it interesting, even boring situations can turn into great situations. Of course grinding-games like Everquest with fixed-mobs and fixed-loads will never be that exciting. Equipment can't load consistently, it has to be random. That evil dragon can't load the magic potion every time, it has to be say 1 in 5. And you can't find out 'till it's dead. That's what makes it exciting.
        When you gain a level, it has to mean something, even at low levels. Going from level 1 to 2, or 4 to 5 should give you something on top of the number. New exciting skills, powers,

        • Re:Freaking Grind (Score:2, Interesting)

          by AdamWeeden ( 678591 )
          If you're having PK make it reasonable.

          After playing a round of golf this weekend I realize what PKs in MMORPGs need. Handicap. Then when two players come together either the lesser of the two is given some sort of advantage to compete or the better of the two is brought down to the other ones level. This then becomes a battle of who is a better fighter, not who has the most toys/buffs/etc.

          • Re:Freaking Grind (Score:3, Interesting)

            by drsquare ( 530038 )
            But then you end up with no reward for effort and achievement, so people don't bother playing the game as much. Then you end up with a game that's just another Quake.

        • Re:Freaking Grind (Score:2, Informative)

          by mobilebuddha ( 713936 )
          just to comment on your assessment of eve-online. it happens to be the the only game that can support over 11000 players online in the same world simultaneously. a true massive multi player online rpg indeed.

          additionally, it is the only game where there is a true ingame economy. most of the other games have vendors that will buy things from the players, to my knowledge, it is the only game where the players are the only participants in the market.

          i don't play the game anymore, but when i did play the game

        • Re:Freaking Grind (Score:3, Informative)

          by EvilIdler ( 21087 )
          Apart from step 2 (you can play trolls), drsquare here pretty
          much described Dark Age of Camelot, the crack-pipe I can't put down :)

          1) DAoC has new quests for the lowest levels, that both tell a
          story and gives OK equipment to start with. Lots of killing, of
          course, but that isn't necessarily all. Many new Catacombs quests
          are also entirely peaceful, and rewards are 5-20%(!) of a level
          plus occasional gear. Then there are the instances, a faster form
          of grind for those who still want it.

          2) The setting isn't exa
        • So, your ideas aren't new. They've been attempted in one form or another; pretty much from the start.

          "1. Make the earlier levels more enjoyable."

          EQ2 had a crap load to do at low levels. Even EQ has plenty to do, explore, etc. At low levels. You've put your own pressure on yourself to "grind" them away instead of enjoying them. And there's even games without levels at all (SWG, etc.)

          "2. Find a new genre. No, you're not Tolkien. Every single game doesn't need trolls, orcs and dragons. Nor magic spell

    • Re:Freaking Grind (Score:3, Insightful)

      by readin ( 838620 )
      As a casual gamer, I didn't mind that people have better stuff; what bothered me was that I could play no role in determining what "better stuff" was. Everything interesting about the game - which combination of equipment, race, spells was best for a character - which combination of classes was best for a group - were already worked out. If I wanted to play a class I was expected to play it exactly the way someone else had figured out long ago.

      I would like to see some effort put into making every chara
    • It would be possible to have a MMOG that didn't focus on character advancement, or one with relatively little benefit to playing a lot during a short amount of real time, or one where there was a substantial game-wide cooperative component. Of course, MMOGs generally try to make people obsessed, because that lets them charge a lot per player and still get people. But different game balances are possible which would lead to different audiences.

      For example, they could do a MMO version of GTA in which you cou

    • Re:Freaking Grind (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Total_Wimp ( 564548 )
      That's the thing about MMOGs: there's always going to be someone who is obsessed with the game and have better stuff than you, and because of that, they're going to do better.

      There's no "grind" in Uunreal Tournament or Counter Strike. Your only indicator that you're doing better is, well, doing better. You know it's fun because you're having a good time, not because you reached 60th level.

      I kind of look at it like exercise.

      If you gave a group of people $10 every time they went to the gym, then after

  • The Grind (Score:5, Interesting)

    by LoganAvatar ( 869001 ) <loganavatar@gmail.com> on Friday July 01, 2005 @05:28PM (#12965520) Homepage Journal
    After starting to play a MMOG as a casual gamer, and finding that I had to play more and more to keep up with both my real friends and online friends, the Grinding of playing became a time-sucker and I stopped being just a "casual" gamer. That is the real catch of these games though, where they are designed so that you can progress slowly at first, and then moving up becomes not necesarilly harder, but more time consuming. I don't think that any MMOGs that design their end-game to appeal to the casual gamer will succeed. There would just not be enough to keep their player base around. Anyways, just my 2cp :)

  • Never gonna happen (Score:2, Insightful)

    by BuddyJesus ( 835123 )
    Why?
    • Gamers with more time than you
    • Gamers with more money than you
    • Companies that sell good accounts

    • These 3 factors will exist in any game, leading to people who are just better than you, period, defeating the fun the casual player would normally get.
    • Yes, that will make for some players who are orders of magnitude more powerful than others. But MMOGs are also clearly designed with these players in mind, or at least those I've tried have been. It seems as if the majority of the maps, at least the more interesting parts of them, are designed expressly for the power gamers with few or none at all for the casual player. (Who is not the same as the novice player.) Not to mention extended campaigns requiring long hours of continuous cooperative play -- who,
    • There's one more point. I don't play MMORPGs, and I'm not sure I ever will, though I have tried a few for sure: the word 'grind' sums it up. I'd rather 'play'.
    • There is no reason that MMOGs have to be designed this way, it's just currently popular with the designers.

      Consider how trivial to defeat each of these:

      Gamers with more time: make advancement fast, with a large dynamic range, and taper off the power growth in the 80+ hour range.

      Your experience as a low time player is that you get a lot of power quickly. As a long term player you can continue building power, but things get slower. Short time players can reasonably expect to get most of the power of a lo
      • Except that your solution will lead the players who have reached your cap slows down leave the game when they hit it, and there goes your revenue stream. They get there quick and then go 'now what?' There's a reason that while it takes 500EXP to get to lvl2, but takes 4000 between 18 and 19, and getting those 4000 is harder then getting the 500 earlier, so that its more and more challenging. It takes longer, so your paying more if you enjoy what your doing. Remove the challenge and its less fun, and your pl
  • I'm still only primarily interested in them from an academic perspective Yeah, whatever you need to tell yourself to justify that 18 hours a day you play.

  • Frigging finally (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Kethinov ( 636034 ) on Friday July 01, 2005 @05:29PM (#12965530) Homepage Journal
    MMOG's biggest collective problem is the lack of an ability to be a casual play. Virtually every MMOG I've played outside of a FPS forces you to play constantly if you're be at all successful.

    Frankly, I'm just not a kid anymore. I can't spend 8 hours a day on a Wintendo playing a game. The only games I'll play today are ones that don't suck up my time and aren't Windows-only. That means I don't play many games. ;)

    • Time ain't what it used to be (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Infonaut ( 96956 ) <infonaut@gmail.com> on Friday July 01, 2005 @05:38PM (#12965594) Homepage Journal
      MMOG's biggest collective problem is the lack of an ability to be a casual play.

      I have some friends who have been into MMOG's for some time and about two years ago they tried to get me into EverCrack. It seemed interesting and all, but I never got into it because I saw what happend to them. One of my friends played so many hours that when he calculated it all, he figured he'd invested one year worth of gaming over a three year span. That is, one third of his time was occupied with EQ. The other two are a couple who played EQ side by side for hours and hours and hours.

      All three of these people who are in their 30s were able to devote so much of their time to EQ because they didn't have to worry about money. None of them worked a normal full time job, and none of them had kids. I took one look at their addiction and realized there was no way I could hack it, so I didn't bother with more than a cursory couple of game sessions.

      I'm looking for the day when the casual gamer like me has an alternative that's better than a choice beteen time-sucking MMOGs and YAFFPS (Yet Another Fuggin' First Person Shooter). Until then it's Ace Combat for me.

      • I agree.

        The thing that makes my situation ironic is that I hate FPS games, even though they're all that's available to me without too much time commitment. I played Ultima Online in my Wintendo years and it quickly went the way of Everquest. Endless time sinks. Even though you can play the game for free now, I find myself disinterested thanks to the time sinks and the lack of a non-Windows client.

        Maybe someone will hear the cries of the casual gamer and write a decent crossplatform MMOG that doesn't suck
        • The thing that makes my situation ironic is that I hate FPS games

          I seriously thought I was the only Slashdot member who felt this way. Every time I bring up the idea that video game developers are stuck in an utterly non-creative rut (hey, how about another game where people with big guns run around and blast the shit out of things?), people jump on me as if I've called the Pope the Anti-Christ in the middle of Vatican Square.

          The problem is that the industry is really very much like the movie industry

          • GTA:San Andreas is tons more than just guns & tits, though.
            It's actually a pretty varied game, with the story eventually
            becoming optional. But first-person shooters are indeed getting
            tiresome. More sneaking games, please! Thank goodness for consoles;
            drop in disc, play a little, pause anytime you're like, and if
            the designers were smart (like in Legend of Kay) save anytime you
            feel like it.
          • I have to agree. While I like the occasional FPS, I also keep going back to some of the traditional games like solitare, mine sweeper, tetris, Mah Jongg, etc. Why? I play those when I'm trying to relax. I occasionally try the 'mystery' type games like Myst, but there's only so many mysterious puzzles I can solve. The last one I tried (out of the bargain bin), had me running back and forth to talk between three different people. I found myself wishing for some action.

            In many of these MMOG games, build
    • Puzzle Pirates gets plugged a lot on ./, but I think it deserves it, so I'm going to talk about it again. It solves your problem to some degree, because of how the game forces group activity. A ship can only do so much without a crew, so its easy to find somewhere that you can contribute, and there's lots of different ways in which you can get involved.

      The are certainly aspects of the game in which you can't really compete if you aren't a full time player. You're not going to be running a big flag and cont
    • You don't find people rambling about how FPSes are unfriendly to noobs and those with slow reflexes. Nobody would seriously consider making the next Final Fantasy 'accessable' to people who want action gaming and don't have the attention span to play a 40+ hour game. You don't see Hollywood putting massive explosions into romantic comedies to make them more appealing to guys. Where does this need to make MMORPGs appeal to everyon come from?
      • I dig the point you're making, but it's a big exaggerated. I'm not saying MMORPGs should appeal to everyone. I'm saying they should be developed in such a way that casual gamers aren't left in the dust. Is there something wrong with that?
        • What's wrong with being "left in the dust"? As long as there's content and players around, it shouldn't matter what level you're at. If the game isn't fun at level 10, it's not going to be fun at level 40. Beyond that, the hardcore guys at the level cap aren't generally going to -want- to group with some casual gamer who doesn't have skills & dedication for some massive raid.

          OTOH, if you're speaking about being able to keep playing with friends that have progressed at different levels, I can unders
          • Sometimes, in some situations, there's nothing wrong with it.

            Personally, when I played MMORPGs, I played for the PVP aspect of it. And when you're into PVP, if you're not an uber maxed out d00d, you simply cannot compete.

            I remember a time in Ultima Online when you could start a character and finish him in a day. You'd be on the same level as everyone else and all that mattered at that point was skill. It's certainly not that way anymore; even the free servers which are dedicated to being "retro" can't qui
  • Although after "Zork" I didn't see the point. He is building his own MUD MMOG in C#, porting it from older sources. So there must be something about the genre that is enduring. Just guessing, I would imagine the audience averaging around 22. And I don't understand the way the area is evolving. Sharpen up the graphics, use ray-tracing, etc, but isn't the whole point to use your imagination?
    At some point, this genre, movies, and cartoons all kind of become the same thing. Maybe that's a good thing? It's defi

  • Grind still is a huge issue. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Synbiosis ( 726818 ) on Friday July 01, 2005 @05:31PM (#12965546)
    Even if you're as efficient as possible, you'll still end up spending way more time than any casual gamer is willing to spend. IMHO, 'casual gamer' and 'MMOG' should never be mentioned in the same sentence.

    99% of MMOG's (except Guild Wars, but it's not quite a normal MMOG, I'd say it's more like PSO) depend on subscriptions for their main profit. This leads to design decisions that would be considered horrible in any other type of game: infamous level grinds, mandatory level cap quests that require hours of killing to find some rare item, and worst of all, forced grouping (I'm looking at you, FFXI).

    I quit FFXI for two of those reasons. I was looking for something to play one or two hours a night, but the combination of forced grouping (Waiting 45 minutes to an hour for a WHM was just too painful) and the level grind made it impossible to get anything useful done in less than two hours.

    WoW looks like it may have resolved a lot of these issues. A lot of the 'hardcore' guys criticize it for being 'too easy' to get to high levels, but from my limited experience, it seems like the fun/grind ratio is much higher than it is for any other MMO I've played.
    • IMHO, 'casual gamer' and 'MMOG' should never be mentioned in the same sentence.

      Heh.
    • Yeah it's really easy to get to 60. But then it's like running into a wall once you get there because the only thing to do is instances which can take hours. And that's if you can find a group. Many classes just aren't considered special enough(like priests) or you're one of 50 other hunters looking for a group.

      • Yeah it's really easy to get to 60. But then it's like running into a wall once you get there because the only thing to do is instances which can take hours. And that's if you can find a group. Many classes just aren't considered special enough(like priests) or you're one of 50 other hunters looking for a group.

        If you think that it's like "running into a wall" once you get to level 60, the problem is you, not the game. A finitely sized group of MMOG developers can only create a finite amount of conte

        • "If the game is no longer interesting now that you've gone through all the content, then stop playing."

          Absolutely. It is however kind of difficult to just leave an MMO. It's like a breaking up a relationship or something. Especially if you have a guild of good people you play with.
          When World of Warcraft came out, a lot of my City of Heroes guildies dug out for the new game. As I'm not a hardcore player I still hadn't hit level cap yet and neither had my rl friend. So we both stuck to playing with a dimish
    • WoW kind of tried, with the rest system and some other things. But since release, every single patch has catered to hard-core players, and there is NOTHING new for casual players... I quit the game because of this very issue.

      It's telling that a Blizzard dev made a forum post about adding a new "casual" raid dungeon into the game-- his idea of "casual" was 20 players and 2 hours! (Forget that it takes at least 2 hours to even gather 20 players!) In fact, I think I can trace that to the exact moment when

  • Planetside? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TopSpin ( 753 ) * on Friday July 01, 2005 @05:32PM (#12965549) Journal
    It was possible to play at least one MMOG casually. In Planetside, player skills were effectively capped after roughly 1 month (level 20 or something) at which point it came down to skill and teamwork.

    It was fun and I had a blast playing the first year. Then they introduced so-called "command" skills which required lengthy accumulation of "points" eventually resulting in special "command" powers like evoking god beams from space to annihilate a few acres of players. Within a few months every non-casual player had this and satellites were going off every few seconds. Then came "mechs"; another lengthy point accumulation resulting in practically unkillable casual player eating monsters. At that point I quit.

    Had Planetside not changed into a game of point accumulation I would still be playing. They could have introduced new environments (sea combat, air combat with more depth, hacking that wasn't merely watching a progress bar, buildable structures, customizable vehicles, elaborate sensor and trap systems, etc.) Instead they introduced things that stratified players into those who had 10 hours a day to play and those that didn't.

    Making a causal player friendly MMOG is easy. There is basically one rule; if a player must play more than 1-2 hour every other day to stay on par with the hardcore players (in terms of "stuff") it's not going to work for casual players. The game must rely on skill and knowledge rather than accumulation of wealth and rank. End of casual player requirements.
    • Seems like it should be possible to create many different environments within an MMOG where only a subset of skills/experience apply. That way you could give the grinders a place to go, and casual gamers a place to go.

      I'm thinking specifically of including online gambling within the MMOG for casual gamers, but I imagine you could create other environments where less skilled players could go and have fun.
    • Yeah, Planetside was awesome until they introduced BFR(big fucking robots) which basically killed the game for a lot of players. In fact prior to then, you didn't even have to spend more than 2 hours learning the game to be competitive against someone who had played for a year or more. A level 3 grunt was just as powerful as a level 20 one was.

      Sea combat, city combat, air combat, space combat could've kept that game fresh and innovative for years. They could've even added more skills to the game and raised

    • Painful memories. (Score:3, Interesting)

      by vhold ( 175219 )
      I was a pretty active planetside player for around a year on Markov... That game's development was just one massive mistake after another.

      Everything was going great in beta, but the downhill started one -day 1- of the game's release. They made a massive and totally untested change, even the manual described the way the game was in beta.

      In beta, you got -full- XP for every kill anybody in your squad made. On release day 1, they divided it by the number of players. On average, if you were used to 10 man
    • Making a causal player friendly MMOG is easy. There is basically one rule; if a player must play more than 1-2 hour every other day to stay on par with the hardcore players (in terms of "stuff") it's not going to work for casual players. The game must rely on skill and knowledge rather than accumulation of wealth and rank. End of casual player requirements.

      I totally agree with you. Many a times I've given MMOGs a try and what basically ended up happening was most of my friends would end up way stronger th

  • Is a casual MMORPG even possible? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 01, 2005 @05:34PM (#12965563)
    I'm beginning to think it isn't. I'm sure everyone here has heard of World of Warcraft [worldofwarcraft.com]. It was supposed to be casual friendly and managed to succeed fairly well at it - for the first 35 levels or so. Some time around level 40 it reverts to the "grind XP" model and once you hit end-game, it's back to EverQuest-style raids.

    The problem is that World of Warcraft is ultimately starting to alienate both hardcore gamers, who rushed through the content and are now bored, and casual gamers, who are just now starting to finish the content and are now discovering that they're getting bored too. A proper setup needs to somehow balance both casual gamers and hardcore gamers.

    Final Fantasy XI [playonline.com] had an interesting system set up originally that could have made it casual friendly and allowing hardcore to have fun too, by allowing casual players to play one job and hardcore players to play several jobs (on the same toon) thereby allowing hardcore players to get more rewards than casual - but not sufficiently more to be completely overpowering. Except FFXI made soloing impossible (no, Beastmaster doesn't count, because you have to have grouped to get it in the first place), and that concept was totally defeated when they raised the level cap from 50 and started adding end-game pseudo-raid content.

    Ultimately, you have to find some way to allow both casual and hardcore players to succeed, or else both are going to get bored and leave. WoW is an interesting case-study in that - it'll be interesting to see how the next several months go as more and more casual players reach level 60.
    • Actually it's quite hard since not even the players can agree. If you browse the WoW forums you will see this is one of the most talked about subjects.

      Hardcore players don't want casual players to be able to obtain high-level items even if they play the same amount over a different time spectrum. The casual player of course wants the same (or equal) rewards even if they can't commit 50+ hours per week or even go raiding.

      Many things come into play here specially those that relate to "real life". I'm sure m
    • Blizzard is attempting to reach out to both casual and hardcore. Molten Core, Onyxia's Lair (Onyxia isn't as time consuming, but it requires group coordination), and the upcoming Blackwing's Lair are hardcore raid instances.

      They are also planning on debuting raids that can be done with about 20 people in a 3 hours the most. That I find casual or atleast more casual than the hardcore instances, and once people get it to an exact science it will be far quicker.

      What I like to see are soloable mini instances
  • The MMORPG genre has become an emaciated specter of its old self in recent years due to the push to embrace a larger audience. Take a look at some of the recent "advances" in gameplay -- no player interaction, "instancing," and the ability to pay real money for game items -- and you see that in order to take in larger audiences the games are losing the competitive aspects that make them games. Simultaneously, the content has declined from the inital commitment of MUDs to roleplaying (some don't even have
  • Is to not have one. This is why I play EVE Online. Grinds suck, horribly. Leveling blows.
    • Is to not have one. This is why I play EVE Online. Grinds suck, horribly. Leveling blows.

      LOL. Never tried mining in that game, have you?

      Eve has a grind, it's just that you grind ISK and not exp.
      • I don't grind ISK, and I don't mine, in fact I never have. So perhaps I wouldn't know. For me in EVE, money is about skill, not skill points or any crap like that--I trade, I corner markets, and I use evil little tricks to squeeze lots of money out of the economy :)

  • Reach the Casual Player (Score:3, Interesting)

    by LordKaT ( 619540 ) on Friday July 01, 2005 @05:36PM (#12965584) Homepage Journal
    I think that one of the steps to reaching the casual gamer is establishing a system where players don't necessarily have to load the game in order to participate. In fact, I wrote about pone idea that could help the casual gamer play the game by using the content syndication features of RSS here [geekstreak.com]

  • Addiction (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Kaorimoch ( 858523 ) on Friday July 01, 2005 @05:44PM (#12965637) Journal
    There is no way I am going to play a MMOG. I have enough problems getting addicted to single player games (wanting to play at work, staying home from work because I am 'sick') and I when games like Everquest get called 'Evercrack', I know I will stay away from it like the plague.

    I hate subscription model games as well. I want to 'own' something, and have the ability to create a server of my own should I want to play with others.
    • My friends and I used to refer to "Command and Crack", "Warcrack" and "Qruacke" - because even these non-MMOs can cause significant addiction.
  • How about a multiplayer game where you can play a traditional role (person who plays all day), or play one of the "bad guys"(play for just a short while, as often or as little as you like). Certainly even a noob would be better than the AI in some of the games out there. For example, imagine being able to play as one of the baddies in Diablo; maybe with experience you could play meaner baddies as time went on. Besides, who wouldn't love chasing down players?
    • Does not necessarily need to be bad guy roles. Just minor roles custom made for casual gamers. Better AI, more depth to a story, different perspectives of the same game. Lots to like there. Good idea, man.
    • even a noob would be better than the AI

      If the game's AI is that bad, a n00b is going to get dominated ^^. The thing is noobs don't know any of the keyboard shortcuts. They can't mouse very good, thier mice get full of gunk, and they have a cheap $3 oem mouse, instead of a 5-button M$ Optical mouse.

      Believe you me, all I do on b.net is patrol move*, it's funny to see the n00bs try to out micro the ai ^^; while I'm busy deciding on which units to make next...

      *= I still play wc3 :p, however, noobs don't kn

  • yeah, me too (Score:3, Funny)

    by d34thm0nk3y ( 653414 ) on Friday July 01, 2005 @05:46PM (#12965658)
    Personally, while I consume my fair share (of porn), I'm still only primarily interested in it from an academic perspective, as resources of human sexuality in online space.
  • The game has to be easy to learn and can have the player advance in them even if only played for short periods of time. I personally don't like to invest more than a few hours at a time if I'm playing a game. An example of one such game that can just be "picked up" and played is PSO - Not exactly massive, but it's online. No one will be able to attract casual gamers with real "serious" time gougers/wasters like Final Fantasy XI. New online games will have to be designed significantly different if they want
  • Personally, while I consume my fair share, I'm still only primarily interested in them from an academic perspective, as resources of human sociability in online space

    I bet you only watch TV for the PBS shows, and read Playboy for the articles.

  • Yeah, I know how bad leveling can get. You get obsessed with it so much that you can't think of anything else! No, not even sex!

    Example 1 [nyud.net] (the maniac phase)
    Example 2 [nyud.net] (the depressive phase)
  • You want casual gamers, then sell a game rather than a subscription. Nothing could be more of a turn off to these massive multiplayer games than shelling out 50 clams and then asking for monthly installments. I want to join in, play a game, and perhaps jump back in a few months later. Hell, there is even a couple recent threads to start up Diablo2 games with folks in the zoo. Have not touched that game in years - but I know I could install and be ready to rock and roll for a weekend of fun any time. I

  • The problem (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Solr_Flare ( 844465 )
    The problem is trying to balance between development costs and getting the most out of existing content. This is why "the grind" exists in one form or the other(slow progression, gating, etc).

    You see, developers can not instantly produce endless wells of content. Nor can they stay in development beyond a certain period of time to build insane masses of content in advance. You have to draw a line somewhere based on development costs and development time.

    A further issue that is arising is the increas
    • I think you probably hit the nail on the head. I consciously chose to not play EQ2 because of the baggage I carried from EQ. I have friends who have moved and rave about it, but I'm over it. However, you fail to recognize that if they can't make the game obnoxiously addictive, they don't make money, so EQ2 must suffer some of the same flaws that EQ had, as well as other treadmill games of that nature.

      Everything that's out now won't last. They'll exploit those they can, but the killer MMOG app has yet t
  • "Personally, while I consume my fair share, I'm still only primarily interested in them from an academic perspective, as resources of human sociability in online space"

    Yeah, and I bet you only read playboy for the articles.

  • Casual player (Score:4, Interesting)

    by vanyel ( 28049 ) * on Friday July 01, 2005 @06:26PM (#12965946) Journal
    That's what broke me free of Evercrack: I just don't have the time or inclination to live in a virtual world. As a result, I couldn't stay up with any of the people I knew playing it (who were practically living there), nor did my availability line up with them. That made it impractical to group play (other than joining up with random groups, which is very hit and miss and often I'd rather just do my own thing), and the game is impossible to advance in for single users (at least casual ones). I enjoy it, but after you reach a certain point, there was just nowhere to go.

    I can hear the question now, "if you want to solo, why go online?" The fact is, the environment is nice for a number of reasons: learning by watching, ask people questions, sometimes people even give you things, sometimes you do feel sociable or find a good group, sometimes you do want to play with friends.

    One of the things that surprised me about it was how much like myself I actually played. I'm much more outgoing in email and usenet than in real life, but when it comes to direct interaction with immediate feedback...all of a sudden it was as hard to meet people as it is in real life. Well, not quite, but as I think about it, there's a real difference between tossing something up in the air for all to see and those interested can respond to if they want versus directing something to a specific person and being unsure of their reaction.

  • Depends on the game... (Score:3, Informative)

    by DogDude ( 805747 ) on Friday July 01, 2005 @06:40PM (#12966024)
    Actually, I've found that Kingdom of Loathing [kingdomofloathing.com] is exactly what I was looking for: a fun game that has plenty of casual gamers and hardcore players, but it honestly doesn't matter. The game is fun for everybody to play, and people *do* get sucked in, but the creators make it a priority that new players have as much fun as long time players. Of course, it may also help that the new breed of caffinated, medicated "twitch" kids aren't going to be too excited about a web-based black and white game. But more than anything, the creators work very hard to level the playing field, while the long time players still get fun goodies. The most telling aspect of the levelling is that player vs. player combat is set up so that it's unlikely that you'll get totally and completely spanked by some 9 year old that spends 12 hours a day in front of the tube.

    My point is that it *can* be done. This is at least one example.
  • Once I was _not_ a casual gamer. Now with one child and another on the way I have minimal time for gaming. This has scared me off "traditional" MMOG options. Guild Wars has no monthly fee so I felt I had nothing to lose by trying it. I've found it to be a lot of fun. If you want to adventure with others, you can do so, or you can take along NPC henchmen if you don't want to wait to build a complete party of real people. The game looks beautiful and has a good story line. They have worked hard to create a Pv
  • MMOGs will not capture the true casual gamer until monthly fees are replaced with hourly fees. A casual gamer is not going to pay $15/mo for an MMOG which that may not play for more than 10 hours in that month. If SOE or Blizzard were to adopt, say a $0.25/hr rate, casual gamers would be much more likely to play since they can play and pay at their own pace.

  • Guild Wars (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Castaa ( 458419 ) on Friday July 01, 2005 @07:24PM (#12966261) Homepage Journal
    IMO, Guild Wars is a good attempt at a "casual gamers" massively multiplayer online game.

    Here are some of my experiences from playing Guild Wars:
    • There is very little if any tedious travel from place to place. The player can simply click on the map to travel to any city (once that city has been discovered).
    • The game's level progression is more designed around accomplishing quests and team based missions and not killing creatures purely for experience sake.
    • A player can group up with AI controlled characters to do quests if there is no one to group with at any give time. Generally it is better to group with real life players but AI characters do a good job filling in where no human player can be found. This can cut down on a lot of wasted time looking for certain classes to fill out a balanced group.
    • The quest system is designed to keep a player moving through the world of the game naturally. Almost always a quest entails a player to travel to the next city where there is almost always new quests or missions to do. One is never left wondering what to do or where to go next
    • The map also clearly marks where to adventure to for a given quest. This cuts down on a lot of wandering and wasting time. Another interesting aspect of the map is that players in your adventure party can draw with their mouse on the map that is shown to other players. This allows tactics and directions to be given to everyone in a clear and simultaneous manner.
    • And arguably most importantly, there are no monthly subscription costs. A player can take all the time they want progressing through the game. There is no feeling of pressure due to mounting subscription costs. If a player needs to take two months off from the game, they can come back at no cost to them and pick up where they left off.
    All in all, I'd recommend Guild Wars to anyone curious about MMOGs but were afraid of the time sink and complexity of them.
    • While GW is fine if all you want to do is whack on rats or whatever brain-dead AI you encounter, it is a completely unfriendly game for casual PVP.

      This is a real shame because the game was originally marketed as the game you'd just pick up and play when you want... how you want.

      By the time of retail release it became a requirement to play approximately 1000 hours of PvE unlocking skills to compete in PvP and GvG. There are pre-made characters you can hop on without playing any PvE, but they just can't com
  • The truth is, the further in you get, the more time you've got to spend doing pointless tasks in order to increase your "experience", which then allows you to access another fraction of virtual acreage. In the same way that I lost interest in the Dreamcast game Shenmue when I was forced to get a job shifting virtual boxes around a virtual dockyard for hours of real-time

    He's using Shenmue, of all games, to illustrate this point? Shenmue was bloody brilliant. Nothing was a grind, and I don't recall having t
  • * CDC PLATO - Empire, Drygulch... to date to me seem to be the most fun MMOGs I ever played and are credited with getting me into computers.

    * BBS Stuff/MUDs - fun here and there, the turn-based stuff typically ended up being a lot more fun because it didn't suck the tremendous time later games did, but it died a long time ago.

    * Sierra Network, Neverwinter Nights (on AOL), STC and early proprietary networks were always stunted by the technology and were unable to deliver immersive worlds worthy of loyalty.
  • Everyone seems to be saying that the reason MMOGs don't suit casual gamers, is the grind, so the content lasts long enough.

    Huh?

    If they're casual gamers, there should be no need for the grind to slow them down. It took me almost a year to get to level 50 in CoH. I've been playing Guild Wars since launch, and still haven't run out of PvE content. The key point about casual gamers is that they play, y'know, casually.

    Sure, the regular MMOGers will turn up, play the entire content in 3 hours, and go do someth

  • Subspace/Continuum (Score:2, Informative)

    by biff-mo ( 681452 )
    Subspace/Continuum fits the 'MMOG for the casual player' bill perfectly.

    I pick it up whenever I have 10 minutes.

    Check it out.... [subspace.net]
  • 0) Provide fun things to do, ideally with a weekly, evolving story that keeps people coming back, that they can take part in. Let them shape the story a little bit by their actions, even if it's just "story path A vs path B".

    1) No Leveling. Create a character, play that character til you're bored with them - they don't continuously "improve". Let people have fun WITHOUT the Grind. Or make character improvement rare, unique, totally unpredictable, earned when a special opportunity came up (but you don't

  • If companies want casual players then they need to make a change. Either make the software free or the subscription free. Do not charge for both!.
  • "I'm still only primarily interested in them from an academic perspective, as resources of human sociability in online space."

    Read any good articles in Playboy lately, buddy?

  • I think MMOGs short-circuit something very, very important. As human beings, we have mechanisms that keep us from stagnating. If we sit in one spot for hours on end, we get bored. But MMOGs are a behaviorist's wet dream, providing a complex system of goals, rewards, whatever it takes to keep the player online for as long as possible. Some people can do this and not fuck up their lives. some [blogspot.com] cannot [jsonline.com].

    A friend of a friend who got hooked on Everquest wound up losing custody of her child (under six years old, I

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