The Barriers of Online Gaming
by Loral on June 24, 2007
Last week I spent a few hours playing the new Shadowrun demo for the Xbox 360. It is a very interesting evolution in first person shooters (FPSs). Rather than the standard run, jump, and shoot we find in most FPS games these days, Shadowrun adds "new verbs" as the marketing guys like to say. You can run, jump, glide, teleport, blast back, see through walls, resurrect, and heal. You can combine magic, technology, and firepower all as fast as you can hit your bumpers and triggers. It's a pretty amazing game but I'm not going to buy it.
It isn't the game itself that steers me away but the knowledge that I am never going to be good enough to compete with those who will have more time, more skill, and more dedication to it than I will have. Shadowrun focuses exclusively on online play and with an online game, there is no option for me to enjoy it in my own way. Other games like Halo 2 at least had a single player campaign but even those disappointed me when I knew how much energy went into the multiplayer portion of that game, a portion I would rarely play and never enjoy.
I've pontificated at great length on the difficulties of the non-raider in Everquest. For six years I played Everquest dozens of hours a week without ever reaching into the depths of Everquest's high-end raid content. Though I spent extensive time in Everquest, I never broke into the inner circles of high-end raiders until recently. Some players in Everquest, and also now in Warcraft, complain about the lack of support for those who have not the time, skill, or dedication to achieve the highest rewards. This problem isn't exclusive to these games. Recently, on the most excellent 1UP Yours podcast (43 meg MP3 file link), they discussed the barrier of entry for gamers who want to play competitive online games but cannot break into that circle of hard core elite gamers.
Building quality games for hobbyist gamers is extremely hard to do. Most games either focus on hard core elite gamers or focus on extremely short-duration gaming with little room in between. This has been a problem as long as gaming has existed but as games become more and more social, as more players interact with one another within these games, the problem becomes much more apparent.
Simple solutions cannot solve this problem. Adding features that automatically balance difficulties to even out the battleground will clearly show themselves as artificial. Hard core gamers won't like seeing their power limited and the victories of hobbyist gamers will feel hollow.
Before we dig too deep into this discussion, let us lay out some definitions.
Hard core gamers are gamers who have both the skill and the time to become the elite within any particular game. These are the high-end raiders in massive online games like Everquest and Warcraft. These are the guys who have ten times as many kills as the next highest player in Halo 2. These are the guys who make magic in Shadowrun really look like magic. These are the guys who post Youtube videos of themselves playing Freebird on Expert at 95% in Guitar Hero 2.
It would be easy for us to stereotype hard core players as jobless pimply teens hiding in their mother's basement but we'd be wrong. These can, and often are, adults with jobs and kids who just manage to have the time, skill, and dedication to be one of the best in their chosen battleground. Now that video games have hit an age where adults remember playing them throughout their lives, just about anyone can be a hard core gamer.
We can define casual gamers, a term I myself demanded to be tossed into the fires of the nine hells for its constant misuse, as gamers who play for very short periods of time, have little skill for more complex games, and who care little for the games themselves other than as a way to kill a few minutes. Casual gamers play solitare, they play flash games, and they play freecell when their boss isn't looking. They might play a Nintendo DS once in a while. They're the masses of people who still fawn over the bowling game for their Nintendo Wii. Any gamer who would take the time to read a message forum, read an article, or listen to a podcast about gaming spend very little time considering true casual gamers. We don't even consider them gamers. The marketing groups for the big gaming companies consider them constantly, however. They're building hundreds of new cell phone games a year just for this market.
hobbyist gamers is a new term for me. It defines those gamers who still consider themselves gamers but, either due to a lack of time, a lack of commitment, or a lack of skill, cannot break into the ranks of hard core gamers. Unfortunately for them, however, they know what a hard core gamer is. They know what the hard core gamers possess. These hobbyist gamers are the ones with one, two, or even three level 60 World of Warcraft characters but without a single piece of raid gear. They're the gamers who get destroyed dozens of times in an hour of Halo 2. Their corpses litter the battlegrounds of Azeroth.
hobbyist gamers didn't have much trouble in the past. It might take them twice as long, but on single player games, a hobbyist gamer could still complete it. Only on games with extreme difficulty or extreme time requirements would a hobbyist gamer simply quit. Online, however, these gamers face different problems. Instead of running at their own pace, they are in a race with some of the best and most dedicated gamers in the world. They may have done well against automated opponents but against real players they get destroyed over and over again. They feel as though they will never be as good as the hard core gamers and, when competing with them, either directly in combat or indirectly through content progression, they simply want to quit.
What can game manufacturers do to help? The companies that figure this out stand to make a lot more than the companies that focus on either the hard core or the casual gamers. There are no easy solutions, however. Everything must be carefully balanced. Double experience bonuses, instanced adventures, high-end loot purchasing systems; all of these have helped steer massive online games towards hobbyist gamers. Everquest and World of Warcraft could both reduce the amount of time it takes to complete meaningful group encounters such as the dungeon instances in WoW and the missions in Everquest.
Thirty minutes is all that can be expected when it can, for both of these games, take nearly that long to form a group capable of completing such an event. For player versus player games, there is no clear solution. Ranking systems don't seem to work. Equipment matching doesn't help make up for player experience. Dynamic difficulties are unrewarding for both types of players. Any game that is good enough to get the attention of a hobbyist gamer would likewise get the attention of a hard core gamer so there is no way to focus an entire game directly for hobbyists without also attracting hard core gamers.
The companies that find the right balance stand to make a lot of money. Right now that continues to be primarily single-player games like Zelda Twilight Princess, Crackdown, Grand Theft Auto, and the single player Halo campaigns. The designers of World of Warcraft made some smart decisions early on by keeping leveling fast even when hard core gamers hit maximum character levels in very short periods of time. Games like the multi-player Halo, Shadowrun, Battlefield, and Everquest will continue to reward those who put in the most time, have the most skill, and the highest focus. Many players would say this is as it should be. People trying to sell the games, however, realize the large number of players they're cutting off.
Breaking through the barrier of online gaming for hobbyist gamers is the greatest current challenge of gaming today. There exists a lot of potential for those who seek to break it.
Loral Ciriclight
22 June 2007
loral@loralciriclight.com
Comment Posted by: Ghost of Zek on June 25, 2007 09:25 PM
Loral,
Excellent article. Also, I like the evolution of the site, it feels like a very definative growth process to embrace the MMO industry as a whole, rather than a pidgeon holed EQ only site. It's good to see evolution and growth.
With regards to the question, 'how to embrace the Hobbiest Gamer', I'd like to toss out a bone to be gnawed on by the EQ developers.
I'd recommend meaningful reward for people to repeat quest driven content in support of other players that have not completed said content. i.e. give the raiders an incentive to support the hobbiest, thus building new social ties.
Ex. In EQ one of the driving death toll tones ringed out on the forums is the lack of desire on the part of the "haves" those that have completed flagging for places like PoP, OoW, GoD, etc., vs. the need for those same players to participte for the benefit of the "have nots"; those that simply cannot create enough player mass to push through that content block.
Solution: Give "flagged" players a free AA, or somesuch if a person participating in the Raid Group completes a Flag event and becomes Flagged. One per event.
Comment Posted by: Talaen on June 25, 2007 11:01 PM
Well said Loral. I like your definitions.
There's a few things that I think can help online games specifically remain challenging and depthful while still being games that "hobbyists" can play.
1. The 90 minute rule. I've talked about this since LDON hit - simply put, players should be able to play through a session and accomplish something from start to finish in 90 minutes-2 hours. That includes time for forming groups, etc. I don't think I need to go too much into why with the audience here at Mobhunter.
2. Don't give in to instant gratification. Everyone likes for their accomplishments to have meaning, from the most time-limited hobbyist to the most hardcore gamer out there. By making the game too easy you only end up allowing people to burn out more quickly.
3. Don't make raiding the endgame. The raider/non-raider divide has been around for years, and one of the reasons that it's been such a big topic of discussion is that raids have always been implemented as the endgame. Even in games that purported to have low and mid-level raiding, it still ended up being 90% endgame raids. When you got to a certain level, raiding became the point. Developers need to get away from that model if they want to really reach the broad hobbyist audience. They need to say "here's our cool adventure game that anyone can do, and it has meaningful solo, group and raid content at all levels."
4. Think outside the box. Let's face it. EQ was a graphical DikuMUD clone. WoW, for all it gets bandied about, was an EQ/DAoC clone for the most part. All the fantasy games are pretty much still building on the same DikuMUD platform. While this has worked for the past ten years, now players have options, and they have more options every year. If designers want to keep people playing their game, they need to start thinking of how to set their games apart from the crowd. Players, especially the "hobbyist" gamers who don't really get to "finish" the current games they're playing, are going to be more likely to jump to your new game if you've done something relatively unique with it, and I don't mean licensing their favorite tabletop miniatures setting either.
5. Don't forget the intangibles. It's easy to think that players just care about levels and loot. But it's wrong. Players like a lot of things - they like social interaction, even if they don't act like it sometimes. They like it when the game lets them throw parties and decorate houses and sit in chairs. They like lore, and reading about the story of your game world. They like making cool things, and that doesn't always mean a sharper sword or shinier suit of armor. They like interacting with NPCs and we're not talking about "kill ten rats" questing here either, but being able to do things like ally yourself with the guards in town so that you can have them look the other way when you sneak into the baron's mansion to play robin hood with his gold. If a developer wants their game to really have lasting appeal with the "hobbyist" crowd, they need to pay attention to all of these facets as well.
Those are my thoughts.
~Tal
Comment Posted by: Corwyhn on June 25, 2007 11:46 PM
Nice definitiosn EXCEPT elite hardcore players in Everquest do NOT have to be raiders. For many its simply a choice of game play style.
Comment Posted by: Redhenna on June 26, 2007 12:38 AM
Interesting article Loral, and great comments Talaen.
I have been playing Eve Online for the last 6 months, and find that it has some interesting answers to the problem. Eve's skill system has skill training taking just time, but skills train whether online or offline, so that playtime has no effect on your skill progression. Further, higher levels of skills take much longer than lower levels, but each level grants the same bonus, so you can get to close to long time player power fairly quickly.
Eve also has nothing like nodrop...if you have the skill prerequisites, you can use an item, no exceptions. This gives multiple routes to improved modules/ships...you can get them as drops, buy them, or in some cases make them.
While, in fact, Eve is not the most friendly game for nonhardcore gamers, but does have some somewhat unique ideas that allow for those hobby gamers to at least not be forever behind the curve.
One of the hardest things for games is how to appeal to hobby gamers, players with more time but lack of interest in large operations(raids), and those hardcore raider types. I am not even sure if it is possible. It might be best for games to specialize, but that has real problems too, eg in EQ, many more hardcore raiders came from originally nonhardcore players.
Comment Posted by: matt on June 26, 2007 08:10 AM
Thats a great article sir. I absolutely agree with you.
Comment Posted by: kiztent on June 26, 2007 08:40 AM
The thing you miss is the multiplication of rewards gained by the hardcore players. Not only do they have better reactions (in the sense of doing the right thing to win), but they have more time with their teams (which matters in battlegrounds).
Plus, of course, they have better gear. Because, you know, those advantages aren't enough.
The hobbyist needs to get over their need to compete with the hardcore player, and the developers need to stop rewarding hardcore players with better loot - at least if there's any meaningful PvP or rewards out of line with risk. EQ was notoriously bad at this with, especially with PoP - quad kiting in HoH versus farming Seb, how does the exp/hour match up?
I'd recommend for the fix that the raid mobs drop swords/armour/stuff with exactly the same stats as the noob gear and that they add nifty titles and increase the detail and particle effects on the loot.
Those who still wish to be first to a kill will be, but they won't get the ADDITIONAL advantage of better loot.
Comment Posted by: Swampfunk on June 26, 2007 10:45 AM
Loral,
While I did enjoy this article, I find that you are more and more steering away from EverQuest centered material... this makes me sad as a long time mobhunter reader.
But as far as the topic goes, I think they need to add a field of research just to set up a gamer niche system. I know that I've been a hardcore uber raider in EQ for a long time... and I also know that is how I've always played any game I play. But my roomate, bless his heart, is a total casual... infact I was laughing out loud at work as I read your article because you basically peg'd our styles of gaming.
One with the desire and passion to dominate a game, and one with barely enjoy attention span to even beat the first few levels of any game.
It really comes down to a personal/moralistic view of the hobby... when does gaming go from a hobby to an alternative life style?
That's what I want to know, and further more, if more people know a person's character than know a person's real name... who is the dominate form of life?
I guess the more you research gaming personalities the more you find the oddities of gaming culture (and it had been this way for all of man's evolution in theory).
Anywas, good artcile Loral... wish I'd see you steer back into EverQuest more!
-Swampfunk
Comment Posted by: Bim on June 26, 2007 11:26 AM
What's interesting is that in Everquest, how "hard core" you are is almost purely about time available to play, and not really much about skill at all. Take anyone, have them have the time to raid 45 hours a week, have them pick a needed class, and I guarantee they can get into one of the top guilds on the server easily and quickly presuming they aren't braindead.
It is completely unlike a game like Halo, where it really is about skill.
Comment Posted by: Krozana on June 26, 2007 11:47 AM
Thanks for finally giving me a name. I've hated the term casual gamer, because as someone who when I am actively playing a game, plays for 20-30 hours a week if not more, I felt I was anything but casual, but being one who liked to do my own thing for most of my time and not join the 'hardcore' raiders I didn't want that moniker either. Hobbist gamer is a great title :)
Thanks for a great article as well, nice as someone else said to see Mobhunter branching out a bit these days
Comment Posted by: barrant on June 27, 2007 04:12 AM
I agree with Bim here. EQ hardcore is all about investing time in the game, not skill. I've been hardcore, casual, and "hobbyist" in EQ at various points over the past several years, and quite frankly, a trained monkey could perform very well in high level raids. EQ isn't this remarkably challenging event as many would have you believe, it's just time consuming entertainment.
Comment Posted by: Sunshadow on June 27, 2007 08:48 PM
I hate how the current mission times are mostly over an hour(all the way up to 3hours). I would like to see a lot more built around the models used in the MPG group trials. At the time they were short, hard and fun.
Comment Posted by: Shadowpro of Old on June 27, 2007 10:59 PM
Loral,
I appreciate your posts on EQ, they are like "the Patch" for an old overcome EQ addiction...
Anyways, I think that the way to make the Hobbyist gamer feel valuable is to have much more potential for random discovery in game. Players, low level or high, should have the ability to discover or craft a weapon, magic item or jewel that sets them apart from the rest of the population. (Bilbo, finds the ring and instantly he is a much more powerful dude.) These discoveries could provide great wealth or power to a small percentage of the virtual world.
I compare it to the guy who discovers a great invention, patents the idea, and makes millions off of the discovery...rags to riches.
Ideas like this could be infused into the lore of the game. While the uber gamers are out earning their keep in places of uber-loot (which they rightfully earn) the hobbyist could be following a questing path which might lead to a great discovery. Let some of the quests be available only once to the person that picks up the trail. eg. A person finds an old note which begins a quest. If the quest goes unresolved for x amount of days, the note falls to the ground for the next inquisitive player (regardless of level) to begin. Now that's a quest. No spoiler site to dumb down the ride. Let the final result be a complete surprise each and every time.
Lastly, I think that it wouldn't hurt to place some random items around the world in obscure places. I was the guy who would run, jump & swim to the most obscure places, just to see what would happen and what was there. How about a random Wurmslayer (now that dates me) at the bottom of that lake, on top of the rock?
My 2 cents...
Comment Posted by: Bim on June 28, 2007 09:43 AM
The problem with one shot quests is that they would entail a significant amount of development work for content that would only be appreciated by one person. Simply not cost effective or realistic.
Comment Posted by: Skuz Bukit on June 28, 2007 09:49 AM
Very good article & whilst some might not see it is relevant to Everquest it very much is, I see, hear & interact with players that fall into your "Hobbyist" gamer definition on a daily basis.
Soon as I read your article I got a few ideas that could be implimented to help create a place for these players within current games, a fps & a mmorpg are the 2 i think can easiest be helped.
FPS:
League tables, with an award for those at the top of their league table each month, pvp is by necessity a test of the best but having the best rack up kills versus people nowhere near their skill level, they get artificially inflated scores, (something wow adressed partially by way of their honour system)a system to filter better players into a different battle ground so that eventually you have the best competing with the best & the worst competing with the worst.
RPG:
MMORPG for everquest the raid guilds at the high end are indeed difficult to enter & stay in if you cannot commit at that level, there are mid tier guilds etc, but the problem partialy lies with how the progression is on a raid aspect, typically you are expected to progress through older raids to gear up to a level competent to tackle newer or more recent content.
There is plenty of room to add mid tier content each expansion that sits at a reward level of past content (giving them another target to hit) that would not be appealing to the very high end (so the people actually beating it would gain a sense of beating something first).
A serverwide "who killed what when" chart accompanied by some kind of league table has been player-organised for the conent for a while but there's not a real league-table system so it's hard to have any competition unless at the very top, a league table that also took such mid-tier content added in each new expansion might hold more sense of achievement for the "hobbyist" level players that can handle the requirements of less than top-end guilds.
Comment Posted by: wormy on June 28, 2007 02:10 PM
Excellent article Loral!
To move away from a (single) game centric site to a broader scope (online gaming at all) is the way to go.
On topic:
to attract and keep(!) hobbyist gamers, there need to be some sacrifices: the hard core gamers.
They will come, run throught the game, will be bored and will leave - what stays are the hobbyists. It's a hard road for a publisher, because the hard cores will cry aloud and may keep other players away. But in the long run, the game will be a healthy one.
Long and rewarding quest series, some random encounters (even non-repeatable ones), lots of titles and fancy items to show off *g* - a big world with lots of things to discover, fight and build. Keep the focus on PvE - too much PvP will create greed (that's where the time/skill problems will surface brutally).
Comment Posted by: Skuz Bukit on June 29, 2007 03:32 AM
I think people Labour unde a misconception when it comes to how games are & the people that play them.
If for example you did lose all the current hardcores, what then becomes the view of those that remain? they inevitably come to be seen as the "new" hardcores, at least in relation to anyone more casual than they are.
It's like one of those Russian dolls with each having a smaller one inside.
It's purely down to human perception.
Comment Posted by: Redhenna on June 29, 2007 03:44 AM
Russian dolls? LOL what a poor analogy!
Comment Posted by: Redhenna on June 29, 2007 02:28 PM
Again, that was not actually me posting just above, and in fact, the russion doll thing is a kinda cool description of something I have mentioned before(not sure if it was here or elsewhere).
When a game puts all it's emphasis on the average gamer, this will, in the end, lead to those at the extremes, the most hardcore and the most casual, to see their playstyle not really supported, and will move on. This puts a whole noew group of people who are now the most extreme, and, as the devs continue to emphasize the average, and not the extremes, the potential for these new people on the edges to see their playstyle not supported. The end result I suspect is a shrinking playerbase. I think the most healthy games work to include stuff for all levels of play, all those extremes, to appeal to the largest population you possibly can.
Comment Posted by: Teremar on June 29, 2007 05:47 PM
I think I can live with the "hobbyist" label, but I'm not sure the "hardcore" should be willing to give it to me. If the game is more than a hobby for them, what is it? (An obsession? An addiction? I kid...mostly.)
At any rate, I completely agree that where a game falls in your life's priority list does not determine your playstyle in it. Causation can flow the opposite direction: Achievers are the most likely to get sucked into an MMORPG's incentive system and become hardcore players. But that doesn't mean that someone who plays a couple hours a week isn't just as focused on upgrading their gear as a raider. Developers who have a history of being hardcore gamers seem to have a hard time recognizing that fact, and an even harder time supporting it.
One factor that hasn't been mentioned is that if a game is a lower priority for you that not only means you probably play less, but you're more likely to play on an irregular schedule. Sure, a lot of "hobbyist" gamers seem to have predictable enough lives that their few hours a week are usually at the same time. That means they get to know the other people who play at that time, and can plan on doing things with those people. That opens a lot of doors (hence the occasional chest-thumping "I only play for three hours a week and I raid, so what's your problem?" post). But if whether you log in or not depends on whether the baby actually gets to sleep, or what kind of mood your wife is in, or who's playing basketball on TV, or the difficulty of the day's New York Times crossword puzzle, your gaming schedule is going to be more erratic. That means your social network is likely to be broader but a lot weaker, and planning to do something with certain people at a certain time doesn't happen.
So what can developers do for those people? They're going to do a lot of pickup groups, so devs should do what they can to support pickup groups. It's inexcusable that an ostensibly casual-friendly game like WoW still hasn't figured out a decent LFG system. Making it easier for those groups to get physically together is another one.
Some systems inadvertently block out those with irregular schedules: for example, WoW's system of saving high-end instances is a godsend for the merely time-limited player, as it means you can go at your dungeon for a couple hours, then quit and come back the next day. But if you can't link up with the same people the next day, not only can you not get back to your saved instance, you can't start a new one with a new group.
Loral mentioned trying to create activities that can be done in 30 minutes, and I'm all in favor. Since that leaves little time to be LFG, soloing is the obvious answer. WoW's battlegrounds provide an alternative as the group is formed for you and usually fairly quickly. But lest anyone think automatic group-forming is a panacea, consider these factors about BG's:
1) Class balance doesn't matter very much. Throw just about any ten people together and you're more or less okay.
2) All rewards are automatic--no worries about ninjas or allocating loot at all.
3) You're rewarded for your individual performance independent of your team.
4) You get a substantial reward even if your team loses.
3 & 4 are necessary to ensure people have an incentive to do BGs with total strangers--but they take away a lot of the incentive to actually work as a team. The result is a lot of solo killers who ignore their team completely, and even AFKers who don't do anything but collect the reward for losing.
In short, automatic groups may work for BGs, but will not work for dungeons.
Talaen mentions activities that can be done in 90-120 minutes, and I'm even more in favor of them. You can do a lot more in 90-120 minutes. Note, however, that if you have to spend a half hour putting a group together that's a quarter of your intended play time, so good LFG tools are still essential. 15 minutes of travel time is also completely unacceptable. Some sessions should be all about travel (going new places, finding new things) but if the goal is to do a dungeon, get the group to the dungeon ASAP.
Comment Posted by: Ghost of Zek on June 29, 2007 10:03 PM
Loral,
Here's a thought that a friend and I came up with after what turned out to be an insanely fun BRD run with just two players and a pet, with both players really really drunk.
It occured to us that right now, at this very moment, EQ has the protential for some very easily included solo/duo content where players could advance, accrue rewards, and manage risk vs. reward to thier own needs. All that would need to be done is SOE would need to remove a couple coded in "cock-blocks".
Right now if your a level 70 character and you "shroud" down to a level 30, you can go get a level "30" LDoN. The problem is, if you un-shroud, it won't let you into the intance.
If SOE removed this hardcoded block, and let people shroud down to what ever level they wanted, and then unshroud, they could create an on-the-fly solo'able, or dou'able instance.
The LDoN content is admittedly not "ubber", but it would allow the hobbiest segment of the player base a way to gather up points for gear and augements, and it wouldn't require "new" content from SOE.
How's that for a suggestion for your evil agenda?
Comment Posted by: Skuz Bukit on June 30, 2007 07:04 AM
The developers probably do give little more than lip service to solo/dup content in everquest because of tuning issues.
If solo content is too good it becomes a detrimental factor to group-forming, if it's not good enough (rewarding) people will simply not use it.
It's a bit of a catch 22, though it is possible i think, the cost in man hours of dev time to tune it "just right" might not justify that cost for the benefit it would provide.
Though personally speaking, i'm in favor of implimenting it somehow.
Comment Posted by: Teremar on July 2, 2007 11:04 AM
I've always thought one of the flaws of LDoN is that it wouldn't let you choose your own difficulty like the rest of the game to that point did. Just duoing with a friend? Choose a lower level zone to hunt in. So I'd be all in favor of adding similar flexibility to LDoN. Of course the gear is pretty irrelevant, but don't people still need spells from there?
Comment Posted by: Pants on July 9, 2007 06:43 AM
I too am glad to see Mobhunter evolve to discussions on MMO topics in general instead of just EQ. This is a very interesting topic also. I feel that to date World of Warcraft probably has hit the mark best, as far as MMOs go, at appealing to all types of gamers, especially in it's original incarnation. I do have problems with the time sinks in the expansion. I feel they went a little overboard with all the faction grinding necessary get get recipes, keys for heroics and whatnot. I feel they are basically forcing people to repeat the same content over and over to "keep them busy." This is something that certainly would not appeal to less than hardcore players. Maybe this is why some people are starting to quit WoW. I've noticed my server being way less crowded than a few months ago. I have heard many people complain that they do not like the direction the game is going lately.
Of course one problem with discussions like this is stereotyping people into types of gamers. As your definitions stand Loral I would not fit into any of those types. I definitely am not a casual gamer when it comes to WoW. I'm not a hobbyist either. Yet I would also not qualify as hardcore. I do play a lot. I take my job seriously in a group and do a good job if I do say so myself. Frequently I am the leader, mark mobs, assign targets, pull and tank. In PvP I can beat most people one on one and know the ins and outs of every battle ground. But I do not raid. I dislike large PvE grouping. The biggest group I will do is 10 person ones. I have raided in the past in EQ and in WoW and decided I do not like it at all. Thus I do not have the best gear in the game, but I probably do have the best of what can be achieved doing the content I currently am doing. So what type of gamer would I be classified as? I don't really feel I fit any of those definitions which is one of the pitfalls of stereotyping players.
In any case I agree that other companies that hit the mark of appealing to all gamer types will make a bundle, in fact I believe it's already happened. That's why Blizzard is making a bundle off of WoW. The question remains if they will continue to as the game evolves.
Comment Posted by: Coray on July 10, 2007 07:30 PM
Wow has been very successful as it has a lower barrier than EQ for example.
The key is not having things that take a fixed amount of time, such as 30 minutes because then the result (maybe only if you're sony), is stupid cookie cutter garbage, but more to let people log on for short periods of time or random periods of time and feel like they accomplished something.
Today I feel like I can't play any game because I never have a set schedule or amounts of time, some days I could play all night, other days I might log on knowing I wont be able to play all night but not sure how long and have to leave other people hanging especially in a game like EQ which is so dependant on other people (I solved that by 4 boxing).
Basically people need to feel rewarded for playing every time they log off and people need to not be left in limbo feeling like they wasted their time when they were logged on.
It will never change that amount of time invested equates to amount of reward, this is pretty much a fact of the universe. You don't become say a world class triathelete by sitting on the couch, you invest time. Reward is not only game given reward but skill level derived.
So for example in Eve which I played only briefly, your skill level is a function of time if you play or not. People who play a lot or rarely play gain skills at the same rate, however if you play a lot, you know more about the game, and develop your literal skills (as in your ability to play the game well). Say you get in lots of fights in the game, you get more and more skill and a comfort level with combat, or if you mine you learn the nuances of that. Clearly that is a set of skills derived from how much time you invest and will in the long term seperate you from a same game skilled person who invests less time.
The reality really is quite simple and it's just human nature, people want rewards for themselves, they want to be able to get on, spend an arbitrary amount of time and feel like they were rewarded for it. I doubt anyone waiting on a group in EQ is bitching about someone who has 10x the played time who has a group and nicer gear, all they care about is finding a group themselves.
In games this translates into a variety of things.
Being able to get some experience/game skill advancement in short sessions is one reward. Generally allowing soloing or arbitrary groups to make modest gains in experience/gear is enough.
Well designed areas that reduce competition and also vary less are good. In EQ there would always be that one area that was so much better than others, this would require you to travel constantly to reach the next good zone. At times this was certainly intentional but other times like early on I don't think it was, it was just different people designing different areas, one would end up sucking the other would be great and people would flock to the great one. A good example was very early on, we ran across the entire continent to get to freeport because that side was so much better than qeynos and freaking BB and the karanas.
In WoW, all of the areas were pretty good as you progressed, and you just generally moved farther away from your starting point, much smoother progression and you never wondered where you should go next. Some people bitch about this but what's the difference, you still travel just as part of your progression, not to search out for that one zone some bastard designer thought would be a good idea to make worth your time.
Item wise being generous with items is a good thing. All sorts of people who are dumb as rocks talk about mudflation as though it's a horrible thing when I think it's a great thing. People should get new items all the time regardless of how much they play (although obviously if you play more you should both get more and better items but relatively the increase in power should be similar amongst everyone). Blizzard did it good when they basically started clean with TBC. Sony did that once too with Kunark (a horrible expansion content wise but people widely think it's great because of the good rewards), but then stopped doing that, eventually basically not even giving out rewards to casual types.
People say that the game is easier if you are constantly increasing the power of players, which is true in a vacuum where you're not also able to change the games content to match the players. Was EQ any easier at level 75 than at 50 with about 1000x better items and abilities? Not really because the game was upgraded in turn.
Again this goes back to human nature, people like stuff. They dislike people messing with their stuff (breaking items, or any sort of 'sinks'). Typically the excitement over an item that is an upgrade for someone is entirely unwarranted, but nonetheless that person feels good that they got a reward. An example would be someone excited they got an item on a raid that gives them +25 more hitpoints when they already have 15k. That actually occurs regularly at all levels of play.
Raph Koster etc can pontificate on these matters for hours but what it comes down to is this, why does the rat press the button during an experiment?
Comment Posted by: Ghost of Zek on July 19, 2007 04:17 PM
Loral,
Any news on an "Evil Agenda" for SOE this year?
I know a lot of people, myself included, would love to see some real progressive changes rolled out by SOE that would finally once and for all open the game wide open to participation by players of all levels (not talking skill here, I'm talking time allotment). There's a ton of content out there that we'd love an solid rational reason to re-up our accounts to finally get to see. It will be interesting to see what SOE rolls out for it's "plan" for EQ this year.
Comment Posted by: Loral on July 19, 2007 06:05 PM
The Evil Agenda is rolling around in my noggin right now. I'm likely to write an article about MMOs on portable devices like the Nintendo DS or the iPhone first.
What sorts of things do you think SOE should do to improve EQ over the next six months?
Comment Posted by: Ghost of Zek on July 20, 2007 01:26 AM
Loral,
Hmm in the next six months. Well, let me answer that from the point of someone who on an emotional level would love to go back to playing EQ, but on a rational level can't justify it without some changes along the lines of the following. Fair enough?
1) Lower the subscription fee. Sorry, it's just a blunt fact, there's too much that's gone too long un-fixed, un-resolved, un-tuned, in EQ, to justify premium costs. Roll back the fee's to $9.95 monthly and give annual memberships at about $6.95 a month. Set a moritorium on increases for at least five years.
2)Re-tool the way AA exp is calculated pre-70. I've read the math, and I've also played the game. Something Rashere did basically made it so that pre "Max" level, gaining AA's is just a nightmare. With 600+ needed to even get a glance from a guild, and 1800+ in the game, I don't think upping the rate of AA gain is unreasonable. Also, something's gotta give. The idea that AA gain in groups is based on the Highest level person in the group is just wrong, it's killed so many grouping options it's just sad. I appreciate Rashere's point of view on it as a way to stop low levels from "soaking up" free AA's while grouped with a high level AA farming machine/bot. But seriously, has this really stopped the influx of power leveling services, and high end guilds using bard aa bots? All it's done is stop the hobbiest from playing I think.
3) Re-tool LDoN points to be more in line with DoN reward time lines. Basically all they need to do is increase the number of points an LDoN gives out by about a factor of 300% to 700%.
4) Remove the code block that stops a person from gaining an LDoN as a shrouded level 30, and then unshrouding and trying to solo/duo it at 70, and make them something you can get solo (i.e. remove the party > 2 code block)
EQ needs solo content for EVERY class. The trick of srouding down and then unshrouding to get a do it yourself LDoN instance is about the only short (under 90 day with minimal development cost) answer SOE can do.
Comment Posted by: gone4good on July 22, 2007 03:46 AM
I just let my 1 year subscriptions expire on my last 2 EQ accounts. I parked my main in PoK and noticed there were only 14 other players. Guild lobby and Bazaar populations were also way below year ago numbers. Sad to see it end this way, but I won't be returning - I actually haven't played my account in 4 months. And no, you can't have my stuff because I can no longer log in.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. Email Mike at mike@mikeshea.net for more questions or comments.