Deep MMO / Casual Player

[Tuebit]

A question for the board ..

At my current life stage, I don't often have time for long gaming sit-downs ... you know, 4+ hours to really get deep into a MMO. What I do have is 1/2 hr to 1 hr, here and there, with the very occasional longer period. I find this doesn't fit well with MMO ... at least not since SWG.

In SWG, missions were *very* short. Pick up a couple missions < 1k away, hop on the speederbike ... be there, done and back in 1/2 hour. I was also big into the crafting. In 1/2 and hour I could sample resources to see what's available (or visit swgcraft.com and see what others have reported), plant or manage the harvesters, start up a batch of components in a factory, or restock the vendor. There was literally lots to do to keep me busy and engaged between the weekend sessions.

LotRO doesn't fit in with this. Some of the missions are short ... assuming they're not halfway across Eriador, but it's often a crap shoot on how long a mission will take. There's precious little, short of gaming the AH, to fiddle with during mid-week when one has a minute here and there.

City of X missions were often longer than 1/2 hour (and it frequently took ... when I last played ... quite some time to fly across the map to the freakin' location).

So ... finally ... the question(s) ....
#1 Any game suggestions? I'd like a deep traditional MMO that fits with my schedule.
#2 Do you think the MMO industry is serving the needs of aging casual players that really want that deep immersive MMO ... but only in short chunks? My answer No! And I wish it would. I have money to spend on a MMO!
#3 What game elements could be incorporated to better attract the casual player.
#4 Would a game with elements for highly casual players still be appealing to the player with more time to invest?

[AgeofLegends]

I think players who have tons of time on their hands to play are getting fewer and fewer with the chaning population demographics.

As a "senior citizen" who is retired, I do have tons of time to play but I find that I really don't want to sit and play an MMO all day. I have other interests that require some time to. I usually just set aside mornings for a few hours to play. Also there are days when I really have just no interest in the game.

I am not sure how you can change the design of these game to make them "deep" -- I don't think that some of them lack depth (well WoW does) it is just that they get tedious after awhile. The biggest tedium I find is travelling.

I tried LOTRO and found that travelling was the biggest part of the game and way too time consuming so I simply quit. Yes I know some people think travel is immersive, but I really don't think so -- I find it just a time sink.

I find that too many designers add time sinks to games to hold back that small group that chew through the new content in a few days/weeks -- and maybe it is a mistake to cater so intensively to them. Perhaps they belong playing games other than MMOs. I have a quest I have to do now just to proceed -- but it is way too long and tedious -- takes 2-3 hours to complete so I keep putting it off till I am in the right mood for. I think quests this long need to be broken up. The problem with this quest as it is an access thing that it can't be broken up.

[Dasein]

I've got a few ideas -

1. Create tasks that can be easily divided into sub-tasks, so even if you do not have time to complete an entire task in one sitting, you will at least be able to make some progress. If at all possible, allow a player to save the state of instances or other events.

2. Allow for rapid or even instant travel to common gathering spots. No point in the game should take more than a minute or two to reach. For travel to be meaningful, it needs to have some context, like being part of a quest or foraging for resources.

3. Allow different modes of access. Create web and cellphone clients that would allow a player access certain features of the game without having to load the full client. This could be incorporated into the game - a knight off adventuring would still have a host of servants and retainers to manage his estate. So, one might log in with a cell phone on your lunch break, tell your major domo to harvest the wheat, sell the cotton, and try to trade the wool for some iron ore. When you get back home in the evening, you've saved yourself 15 minutes that would have been spent on managing your affairs but now can be devoted to adventuring.

[Inhibitor]

I actually wrote a post about this on LagORama...here was my idea.

I'd just love to see some sort of happy medium. Maybe a game that has the hard-core elements, but with casual elements built in as well. Imagine a game where, in order to participate in PvP, you needed elements gotten by playing Peggle-style minigames, to play PvE you needed items gained from PvP, and to play the minigames, you have no prerequisites.

Suddenly, you've got mom helping junior (at his request, mind you) grind his PvP toon.

World of BejeweledCraft fever...catch it!

I'm in the same boat you are...I'm an MMO junkie, but I don't seem to have the time to feed my addiction. I've done the "5 hour WoW raid" thing (and not too long ago), but I simply don't have hours at a stretch to play at this point in my life. So I dink around with CoX, EvE, flitting from game to game like an OCD mosquito, pausing just long enough to suck the casual goodness from the veins of a game before zipping over to another.

(Despite the fact that I just called myself a bloodsucker, I am not, in fact, in the legal profession.)

I still like the same gaming experience I always have, but the barrier for entry for me has become "time". I don't think we're alone in this, and I don't think the trend is going to change.

[tachevert]

Try Puzzle Quest. Or don't, if you want to do ANYTHING other than play it. It may not be MMO, but it sure satisfies the RPG demons. Think of it as MMO-thadone.

[Blackguard]

I'd just love to see some sort of happy medium. Maybe a game that has the hard-core elements, but with casual elements built in as well. Imagine a game where, in order to participate in PvP, you needed elements gotten by playing Peggle-style minigames, to play PvE you needed items gained from PvP, and to play the minigames, you have no prerequisites.

Suddenly, you've got mom helping junior (at his request, mind you) grind his PvP toon.

World of BejeweledCraft fever...catch it!

Seems like a solid idea on paper, but in practice that has far too much interdependence. Players, as a general rule, loathe required interdependence. For example, if you forced my to group in order to be an effective solo player, I'd simply not play the game. If you force me to PvP to get high scores in solo minigames, I'd simply not play the game. If you force me to PvP in order to effectively PvE, I'd simply not play the game.

The name of the game now is multiple avenues. Allow me to gain great gear soloing, grouping, raiding, and PvPing (which can further be broken down to dueling, battlegrounds, arenas, etc.). Allow me to advance my character in some way no matter what avenue I decide to embark upon, and ensure that I can continue down that selected path with what I gain from going down it.

Meaning, I should be able to keep going down the solo path just by soloing without being forced into minigames, PvP, grouping, etc. Any time you force a player to deviate from his preferred style of gameplay in order to continue his preferred style of gameplay, he becomes resentful. This is one reason why I believe in experience and gear rewards for PvPing; if I play on a PvP server, I should be able to continue that style of play without PvE.

[Tuebit]

Players, as a general rule, loathe required interdependence. For example, if you forced my to group in order to be an effective solo player, I'd simply not play the game.

I absolutely agree ... in general, but I'd like to note there is a subset of players for whom 'forced interdependence' is the desired game. Simply permitting interdependence doesn't give the game the necessary characteristics to attract that subset.

A similar thing happened way back when with the Felucca / Trammel split. The "wolves" cried long and loud at the loss of their "sheep". That small subset wanted essentially forced PvP.

And carrying it further, I wonder if a game can merely "permit" casual play and actually cater to the casual player ... or, as with the previous two examples, is a forced casual game required. Otherwise, non-casual players in a casual game would tear through content and dominate the highest positions / statuses / offices.

Try Puzzle Quest.

Great game I agree (and as addictive in the short-term as any MMO). Methodone for MMO's is a pretty good description. But, as you say, it isn't a deeply storied MMO. It doesn't let me impact a shared world (not that any of the current crop of MMO actually let me do that either ... but I keep hoping).

[Kidinnu]

Anarchy Online had auto-generated missions from mission terminals; you could take a couple of solo missions in your current city and be back at the issuing terminal picking up your reward in 20 minutes. They weren't *thrilling* or storyful, but they gave you combat, xp, and loot in small increments.

If you wanted high-powered raid-like loot, you'd need to break from that at certain level ranges to head into dungeons; but IIRC very few of those were useful outside a limited level range, and so what you did "need" to do could be put off to your longer sessions. You'd get faster XP gain with 2-3 hour hunting sessions in Shadowlands, but that's not your goal.

[maviscruet]

Speaking about game mechanics - Is some sort of account/character limited resource the way to go....

I'm thinking of a tale in the desert II travel time (not sure if it made it into ATITD III) or WoW's rested exp (actually WoW's daily quests are also a sort of link to this)?

Something that makes a player much more effective for a brief period of time - and is used up via play - and is replenished by the passing of real time (perhaps even only generated when logged off).

This would allow a casual player to get more 'bang for a buck' for there short time over keyboard then a hard core player does for the tenth hour straight.

[Blackguard]

I'm generally a fan of vitality, rest, power hours, and anything else similar that will help casual players get more bang for their buck. I prefer when it doesn't require a player to log off in town or in an inn because it really doesn't accomplish its goal (getting players in a centralized location to interact. Instead, people just Hearthstone and log off immediately).

A slight modification to WoW's Rest system would, in my mind, make it far better: You gain Rest at all times while logged off, and only in Inns or Cities when logged on.

[Tuebit]

Speaking about game mechanics - Is some sort of account/character limited resource the way to go....

LotRO does this as well ... accelerated XP, per character, after being logged out of that character for a while.

It doesn't really help keep casual players in sync with their heavier play friends ... since the bonus applies to everyone equally.

I've noted that *some* players use it as a cue to switch characters. Play X hours on one character until you run out of "blue bar" (xp bonus) ... then switch to another toon that still has some blue bar. If it was designed as a mechanic to encourage people to swap regularly between toons, then great ... but it certainly wasn't any great benefit to me as a casual player.

I think you'd have implement almost a two-part system ... XP bonus for players who play very little and NO xp bonus for players who play a lot. But I doubt that would be well accepted.

I think what's really needed for casual players is other mini-game styles to play that are still somewhat social.

Anarchy Online had auto-generated missions from mission terminals; you could take a couple of solo missions in your current city and be back at the issuing terminal picking up your reward in 20 minutes. They weren't *thrilling* or storyful, but they gave you combat, xp, and loot in small increments.

Great point! I also appreciated this aspect in SWG. Now the trouble with SWG was that, depending on your build, it was an hour to get to a city, find a Doc and get buffed before heading out for that 20 minute mission. LotRO definitely DOES NOT have missions that you can run quick when you only have 20 minutes.

Trouble is, the short little missions have no social component.

Asyncronous social mini-games based on really "collection" might work.

In SWG Jump To Lightspeed you had ships. You fought NPC ships in space and looted components. With the right components you could upgrade your own ship. With enough matching components you could have an engineer reverse engineer something to make an even better component.

Our little community put up 10 shared houses and pooled our looted components (the houses acted like a kind of shared item bank). One of us (hey Tachevert!) did all the reverse engineering of components when enough of each kind were collected.

It was social. It was asyncronous (we didn't all need to be online at once to contribute). It was something we could all contribute to in short 20 minute bursts. Great for a casual player.

I wonder if those kind of things could be formalized ... allowing the casual player to continue to interact with and "be of use" in a group of more active players.

[maviscruet]

Speaking about game mechanics - Is some sort of account/character limited resource the way to go....

LotRO does this as well ... accelerated XP, per character, after being logged out of that character for a while.

It doesn't really help keep casual players in sync with their heavier play friends ... since the bonus applies to everyone equally.

Your right - a person who ploughs 30 hours a week into a game will still be much more advanced then somebody who puts in 2 hours. However depending on how extreme the system is - it can narrow that gap. Immagine if your 'rested' state gave you ten times exp that an unrested player got. That would certainly narrow the gap and thus benefit the casual player. But yes - your right - an easy way round it is to simply switch character.

The idea of shared community goals - the SWG example - is one I really like. The trouble is - if you as a group can do it in X hours play- then that highly organised guild can do it in X/100 hours....... One idea I've considered is a 'trail blazer' effect. The first people to do a thing have a massive cost - each person who does it subsiquently has a a reduced cost. So in your SWG example it might have taken a 1000 parts to reverse enginers something for the first people and only 50 for the casual group when they reach the same content some time later....

[maviscruet]

Sorry - forgive me for talking to my self but I had a sort of question....

If you were going to provide any sort of 'sweet time' to help narrow the gap between a casual player and a harcore player would you need to make the benefits tied to a single character?

So for example - getting exp at a faster rate is fine. But getting more gold/resources would not because you would have to face the fact that an insane hardcore player will simply switch to another character/account (assuming accounts are trival to get) and play that one. Then move the goods to one central character......

The other alterntive would be to make it's not worth your while - for example the ammount of time and effort to get a character in WOW to max level means it's not worth doing that simply to do the daily quests..... But then it's not a significant gain.....

I was thinking about a crafting system where you could sit and watch the bar move - or you could just spend 'time' you built up while offline. But I realised people would just create multible accounts - and cycle between them...... which is a shame. But cna anybody think of a way of taking out the time sinks for a casual player but keep them in for a hard core player.....?

[Tuebit]

I'm not really sure that rested XP systems really make that much difference (it didn't for me, in LotRO).

As you say ... it's not just about XP, but gold, items, etc.

All the XP bonus does is perhaps let a casual player advance a little faster per unit time (maybe, depending on how the system is arranged).

Really, I think, a casual player just wants to be able to keep up with their friends and have a shot at some of the more interesting content usually reserved for the top few percentages of hardcore players.

The most successful system I've seen to date is the side kick system in City of Heroes. Basically, a higher level hero makes you their side kick. You get a temporary boost in level (while sidekicked ... and only if you stay very close by). It lets you participate in most mid-high level content with your friends. There are exceptions (where you need an actual specific minimum level to enter).

It's not perfect ... it's still a little bit about gear in CoH (enhancements are basically gear). I'm not an expert ... but I'm not sure it accommodated for enhancements.

But it is the best I've seen in terms of supporting casual players. Unfortunately, CoH had other problems ... like incredibly long travel times (even with flight abilities). Plus ... the WHOLE GAME was about "being online at the same time as your guild / friends". There was really nothing (at least when I last played) along the lines of asynchronous social gameplay (but that's another thread).