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Why do casuals play MMORPGs?
happyiksar
Member Posts: 125
Why do they want to play MMORPGs when they don't want to invest any time? Wouldn't FPS games be better for them, since they don't like the whole leveling, raiding, questing, etc.
They want to remove any time consuming activities from MMORPGs. After a while, MMORPGs won't have any time investment. You'll just log in with your level 80 with max gear because leveling and raiding are too time consuming for some people.
WoW is a perfect example of this, where their game has gone in the past 6 years. From 40 man 3 hour raids to raids where you just zone in and theres a boss waiting for you.
Comments
I do not know why casuals play MMORPGs, but I do know the games make money.
Casuals play mmo's because they are fun BUT we have real life commitments that result in a casual playstyle being the only option.
How much time does a person need to invest to not be a casual? ...and so because a person can't invest X amount of time it takes to meet your "standard", that means they dont like leveling, questing and raiding? wha...?
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must be because they like leveling and questing, but maybe no raiding and grinding...strange.
Why do "hardcores" like wasting their time grinding, raiding, leveling, questing, etc.
Simple. Most people play games for the content, not for the amount of time they can invest in them. FPS Games don't have the same type, or amount of content that MMOs generally do.
Also, the 'casual gamer' tag is so overarching that it applies to almost anyone who has a job or a social life outside of gaming.
Games are meant to be fun, not work. A lot of the "hardcore" people seem to have forgotten that.
People play games because of escapism. Taking a break from work, using their free time to have fun. MMORPG's give them a very, very heavy social undertone to the game they're playing, which is simply a way to keep in touch with their friends rather than 'rot away' in their basement while playing.
Hence, "casuals" play MMORPG's, and they made WoW as big as it is now, because it put much more emphasis on the fun rather than the grind, at least compared to other MMO's.
It's not really hard to see why 'casuals' play MMO's. Ever since WoW they started to become fun rather than work, and while newer MMO's might have missed that point it's nonetheless the major reason why the game became such a success - Drawing the 'casual' crowd to it rather than the hardcore basement nerds.
Gaming has evolved very, very far from when it was only done by fat people with beards who still lived at their parents place - A stereotype, i agree, but fact is that gaming made it into popular culture far outside of the subculture it used to reside in. MMO's making this step was just a matter of time.
Playing: WF
Played: WoW, GW2, L2, WAR, AoC, DnL (2005), GW, LotRO, EQ2, TOR, CoH (RIP), STO, TSW, TERA, EVE, ESO, BDO
Tried: EQ, UO, AO, EnB, TCoS, Fury, Ryzom, EU, DDO, TR, RF, CO, Aion, VG, DN, Vindictus, AA
How can you like questing when they are all variants of the same thing?
How do you like leveling when that is a grind?
Just because you make leveling faster doesn't make it less of a "grind"
And the game is so easy, how can you like leveling when there's no challenge or risk of dying?
Hardcore like a challenge, casuals don't. Hardcore are ok with reasonable time investments (1-2 hour per day), casuals are not.
Casuals want to level to 60 in a week, hardcore players care about the journey and don't mind it when it takes a few months to reach max level.
WoW is like:
Welfare level 80's
Welfare gear
How is any of that meaningful?
Because, like with any game, they want to play to have fun?
Because MMOs aren't about killing tons of time to have fun(from the client end at least).
Because with MMOs you can play and interact with a greater community?
Because these so called 'casuals' would rather be able to enjoy the game on it's own merits rather than play a waiting game to enjoy it?
Because if you need to grind through more time or use better equipment to make yourself feel superior to other players, then the likelihood is that you actually aren't a very good player, and casuals would rather play based on their own ability rather than how little of a life they have?
Because they would prefer a game that actually challenges them, rather than one where they just wait to win.
Though to be fair, is one actually a casual gamer if they would rather replace waiting around to win with having an actual challenge instead? I've been called casual before for disliking the time commitments, but what always gets me is that the 'hardcore' players who dedicate so much time to their craft are usually the driving force behind why games like WoW become mind numbingly simple to pay, where the only challenge to even consider is your willpower to stare at a screen and do nothing. They opt for the only option that creates a rarity of commodities so as to ensure their status of 'elite' and 'hardcore' by putting the only cap that won't stop their bad skills from getting in the way while prohibiting the rest from attaining such.
If I really REALLY wanted to do that, I'd play EVE. (sarcasm, EVE is a great game, 'I keed I keed'.)
EDIT: Point, time does not equate to challenge!
Better AI, unpredictable combat sequences, mobs that learn and adapt to commonly used tactics. None of these things add to how much time something takes, but makes it considerably more challenging in a considerably more entertaining way.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
I think it's the casuals who forgot games are fun. That is why they want all of the fun elements removed.
Any challenge is being stripped out of games because of casuals. Because challenging content is also time consuming, they don't want to do it.
I don't find WoW fun, but maybe that is because I play games for the challenge. Know what is fun? Everquest, with the first 2 expansions.
It's too bad these people don't want to do any work in the games they play, they just want to keep reducing the time/difficulty in these games, leading to games where you start out with everything and there is nothing to accomplish or work toward when you log on.
I live a busy life. I have an actual career (not just a job, big difference), own my own house which comes with all those responsibilities as well, and like to stay in shape.
But when I have downtime, I want to play video games and have fun. RPG's like Final Fantasy and Crono Trigger/Cross just to name a few are games I loved to play while growing up. MMO's allow me to play that type of game on a grander scale with other people as well. It's an easy choice for me.
I can pose the opposite question in return: why do people spend so much time on a game? I mean, I spend quite a bit of time on them myself, but people who are putting in over 40+ cant possibly have an active lifestyle (or at least its uncommon).
And to counter your other point: I think its casuals who remember games are SUPPOSED to be fun. We enjoy challenges as much as anyone else, but for us accessibility is key and also we dont like doing things that seem grindy or are busy work. What sounds fun about killing the same mob 1000 times? In fact, I could argue its the 'hardcore' players that ruin it. They fire up a game and rush to the level cap asap so they can START having fun. That ruins the point of a game!
I suppose it depends on what causes them to be casual players, and what you mean by casual. If by time investment you mean any time investment at all, then I have no idea why a casual would want to play a game that was meant to take a large time investment to hit endgame. Taking out that investment just leads to them hitting endgame faster and being bored out of their minds sooner.
The problem I had and why I'm currently on hiatus from MMOs altogether is because the amount of time needed to accomplish anything at any one time was just too large. I have a schedule that just doesn't allow me to play MMOs and be successful in life. Now in WoW I could jump in and manage auctions across three servers in 30-45min if I got up early before work, but after work was over anything longer than an hour max would cut into other responsibilities. And TBH WoW has one of, if not the most forgiving gameplay of any MMO I've ever played, time investment included.
I'm not against time investments in MMOs, so long as they are done in a manageable way. Completing a goal that takes longer imo is much more fulfilling. What Blizz did with the LFD tool, and in design by breaking the ICC 5 mans into chunks are a good step in the right direction. They even started off well with how SM was divided. Even in raids how you can keep it saved for a week+;
TLDR; There's a time investment for WoW?
How is a challenging game not fun?
It's hard for you to argue that casuals are somehow better than people who actually play the game considering casuals didn't want to step into any of the raid zones in WoW.
They didn't want to do BWL, AQ40, or Naxx. How are they better than the people doing those zones? Lol. Those casuals were stuck in Molten Core because they didn't want to log on and do raids.
MMORPGs need to bring back the challenge. I'm sick of them catering to people who might only log on 1 hour a week. If they design all their content around people like that, how challenging do you really expect their game to be? It'll be more like a bunch of mini games.
Here's a better question.
Why do "Hardcore" players invest in games only to rush to the highest lvl and complain about lack of end-game 1-2 weeks after a game launches?
I put in 2-4 hours a few nights a weekin a given game and thats honestly about all the time i can give. I have a life outside of games, but does that make me any less of a gamer? Hell, I'd rather play a few hours a night and make a $50 game last a bit, (Hell, most of the time games release major expansions before i'm done with the regular content) Thats great for me and other "casuals") rather than finish everything 2 weeks in and looking around for more to do.
I think you are confused about hardcore and casual players. Casual players are those who do play 1 or 2 hours a day.
Say it takes 10 days total played time to level from 1 to 80 in WoW, a reasonable amount of time some do it faster and some do it slower. It would take you 17 weeks playing 2 hours a day every day to level a WoW character to 80, if that isn't casual I don't know what is.
I don't think its unreasonable if games were designed for people who log on between 2-4 hours per day
But to play an MMORPG that is designed for someone who logs on 1-2 hours a week? What kind of MMORPG would that be? One without time investment, or character development..
Because they want to beat the game?
Because games should be designed to be impossibly difficult at the endgame, so people like that can have a reason to keep attempting content and becoming better, improving their character and strategies.
Unfortunately some games like to make content that is too easy, leading to a game where you log on and just re-farm trivial zones.
Generalizations are fun
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[quote]Originally posted by happyiksar
I don't find WoW fun, but maybe that is because I play games for the challenge. Know what is fun? Everquest, with the first 2 expansions.
It's too bad these people don't want to do any work in the games they play, they just want to keep reducing the time/difficulty in these games, leading to games where you start out with everything and there is nothing to accomplish or work toward when you log on.
[/b][/quote]
EQ wasn't a challenge, it was a grind. I personally don't see the fun in camping for 12 hours for a simple tank and spank boss which has so much HP that he goes down purely bu attrition, not skill. I don't see the fun in having to grind rabbits day in, day out just to get a level which doesn't actually *do* anything other than showing a very slight increase in your statistics. I don't see the fun in the user interface which was about as userfriendly as the cockpit of an F16 to a 6 year old child.
With all due respect, i think you're confusing "challenge" with "grind".
"Challenge" is when you get to duel Fatal1ty in Quake 3.
"Grind" is when you have to kill the same rabbit 10,000 times for the oh so important stat increase.
While WoW still has grind, given that there's still no one in the world who's killed the Lich King on heroic mode (and the guilds that have killed the wing end bosses can be counted on 2 hands), there's still more than enough challenge left in the game for people who actually bother to take it up.
Playing: WF
Played: WoW, GW2, L2, WAR, AoC, DnL (2005), GW, LotRO, EQ2, TOR, CoH (RIP), STO, TSW, TERA, EVE, ESO, BDO
Tried: EQ, UO, AO, EnB, TCoS, Fury, Ryzom, EU, DDO, TR, RF, CO, Aion, VG, DN, Vindictus, AA
so just because someone doesn't have much time to play means they don't enjoy a challenge?
I also don't know of any casual players that want to get to level 60 in a week. in fact, people without much time to play don't put such restrictions on themselves. Its the people that play 40 hours a week that want to fly through to max levels. Personally, I sit down with an hour or two to play and i think, "maybe i will gain a level or two today, maybe I won't".
Maybe we just have different ideas of what "casual" means
Good job completely ignoring and consequently misinterpreting what I said.
So i'll repeat, things that take too much time are not challenging, only time consuming.
It's like planing wood. Simple as hell, and bling one armed monkey could do it, but it takes time to do it and have any proper results.
Problem is, the more time something takes, the less challenging it usually is. It's the compensation of stress of the actual moment to moment actions versus the tie used to complete the actions themselves.
Like my example comments of how to make a game more challenging without taking more time. Yet again you provided a perfect example of a hardcore gamer completely ignoring actual methods of making a game harder, in favor of simply making it longer.
A longer game is not a more challenging one. The challenge comes from the moment to moment activities and the complexity, strategy, and skilled needed to complete them, not how long it takes to do so.
In other words, the camp of 'casual' gamers I'm in seem to like games that would chew up 'hardcore' gamers and spit them out . I want a game that plays for as long as I want to and cap provide for. I also want a game that will actually make me use my braincells for once, rather than succumbing to mindless repetitive actions that are only a challenge in the sense that it's a test of my willpower to endure the tedium.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
I never said that MMO's were made exclusively for casuals, i said they were made with casuals in mind. They still have content for the "hardcore" player, but those hardcore players are so focused on "their" content that they forget it's actually there.
STO is a failure because it focused exclusively on the casual player, i will not contend with that. However, games should be made with both types of player in mind, not just one. That's why MMO's like WoW and Lotro are such huge successes, and why a lot of others have failed.
Playing: WF
Played: WoW, GW2, L2, WAR, AoC, DnL (2005), GW, LotRO, EQ2, TOR, CoH (RIP), STO, TSW, TERA, EVE, ESO, BDO
Tried: EQ, UO, AO, EnB, TCoS, Fury, Ryzom, EU, DDO, TR, RF, CO, Aion, VG, DN, Vindictus, AA
Casual games only "chew up and spit out" hardcores because the games are trivial to hardcore players.
Like take WoW for example. The endgame has been easified. Hardcore guild can clear anything in that game within a month of starting raids. Of course they will get chewed up and spit out because there's nothing left for them to do.
It's because their game is too easy. Nothing left for "hardcore" players to do.
Because until Farmbook, there really weren't any casual social games out there? That's what I always thought.
Being casual has nothing to do with wanting a mmo to just be a "game" or wanting a mmo not to be challenging.
Where the hell do you people get this crap?
It's all about how much time your willing to give a mmo.
Doesn't matter what type of mmo is it from WoW to Eve to Hello kitty if your playtime is on the light side weekly then your casual.
Playing: Rift, LotRO
Waiting on: GW2, BP