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

[killtherat]

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

[An Onerous Coward]

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

[readin]

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 character an individual. The best solution I've thought of is to provide some sort of "gift" once every few levels(in EQ the trainers would give them out). Your elf-ranger wouldn't get the same gift as every other elf-ranger, and those elf-rangers wouldn't have anyway to get that gift on their own. Some people might complain if they got a bad gift, but the sting would be reduced by the knowledge that a few levels later they might get a great gift.

When grouping with new people, you wouldn't just assume their role. You would need to talk to them, find out what abilities they have, and then decide who does what.

Early role playing games tried to introduce variety by rolling dice to get player attributes, but people would just start over with a new character if they didn't like their dice roll, so in games like EQ you get to assign the stats yourself (again, their are expectations of how you will assign them). With gifts being randomly given out every few levels, it would take long enough to get the gifts that it wouldn't make sense to keep going back and starting over.

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.

Planetside?

[TopSpin]

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.

Is a casual MMORPG even possible?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm beginning to think it isn't. I'm sure everyone here has heard of World of Warcraft. 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 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.

Time ain't what it used to be

[Infonaut]

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.

Addiction

[Kaorimoch]

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.

Casual player

[vanyel]

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.

Guild Wars

[Castaa]

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.

Re:Why would..

[Squeeself]

The same reason millions of people pay $30 a month to watch satellite (or cable) television. I find it extremely interesting when people say this: I just bought a $50 game and now you're telling me I have to pay $10 a month to even use any of it??? Why is it that people don't say: I just bought a dish system and now you're telling me I have to pay $30 a month to see anything??? I've never been able to find the distinction. Both are entertainment. You're paying for a service in both. The mmog even costs less than watching your TV...Why do so many more people make this complaint over the other one? Now, you may be like me and just not *want* to shelve out money (I don't have satellite either) but that's a whole different issue. That's what marketing is for: to convince them they need it (Joe Bloe across the street believed the marketting in satellite TV...)