MMOGs Reaching For Casual Gamers

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.

Comments

Freaking Grind

[cloudofstrife]

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

[drsquare]

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,

The Grind

[LoganAvatar]

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 :)

Frigging finally

[Kethinov]

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. ;)

Grind still is a huge issue.

[Synbiosis]

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.