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What is a casual MMO?
jasthemity
Member Posts: 63
Is it based on the death penalty? The quest difficulty? The time needed? Is EVE hardcore and is WOW casual?
Comments
WoW is more hardcore tho because in order to progress you need to Grind your way through the games levels in order to progress.
Another great example of Moore's Law. Give people access to that much space (developers and users alike) and they'll find uses for it that you can never imagine. "640K ought to be enough for anybody" - Bill Gates 1981
Casual/Hardcore mean different things to different people; I judge them on the basis of how much time investment they require.
As an example, I'd say WoW is geared for casual PVPers (Battlegrounds, Arena) but for hardcore PVEers (4 hour long 25 man raids) and as a comparison EvE is for hardcore PVPers (harsh death penalties, open PVP) and casual PVEers (no instances, easily accessible content)
It's been a year or two since I played EvE, so my rememberances may be out of date.
I'd say it's more about what you make it for yourself. Both of the examples can be either hardcore or casual, just depends a lot how you play the game.For example a "hardcore" in WoW could raid every day 8 hours and then farm mats for next raids, while casual could do few battlegrounds, chat with guild and do some questing.
All of the above. A casual game is one that allows its players to advance fairly quickly with relatively little time invested, and that usually involves somewhat easier gameplay (not always though -- Lineage II was "easy", but the xp table was hardcore, so even though every encounter was easy enough, the time to grind is what made it hardcore), somewhat faster advancement, and significantly reduced penalties. WoW is certainly very casual friendly.
Now of course one can play a more hardcore MMO in a casual way if one is contented to progress at a much slower pace. That's a player's decision to play his own may regardless of the game's design. EVE is an example of a game that can be played that way because while you need to grind time in the game to make money to get nicer ships, your skill training takes place in real time, so it can be played on a lighter schedule if you are willing to take longer to get nicer kit.
And conversely, even a game that is designed to cater to casual players, like WoW, can be played in a very hardcore way. There are plenty of people who play WoW 6+ hours a day, and in no way is that casual by any definition.
Casual MMO in a sense can be described as games that you can play whenever you like without the feeling of "pressure to play". In my opinion casual play is a type of play style .. it's NOT a type of MMO.... but I think nowadays people turned "casual gaming" into a marketing byword ... in another sense of the word.. you could say that it's an MMO that isn't too addictive (or include addictive formulas) but has enough incentive for you to play.
The science of gaming and what makes people tick is only recently being explored. Back then games like Everquest are hardcore because in order to achieve something you have to spend considerable man hours playing it. WoW can be considered casual (questing, dungeon runs) but it also has hardcore elements (raiding, rep grinds, farming).
All of the above posters are correct, but I feel games that have large timesink grinds are not really casual no matter how you play them. Two examples are Lineage 2 and FFXI. I don't think they can ever really be played anything less than hardcore. (not if you plan to reach the endgame content anyways)
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Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
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"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
The way I see it, is that it's all about time investment.
Things like death penalties and quest difficulty have NOTHING to do with casual vs. hardcore in my mind.
It's all about how you are rewarded for the time you invest playing.
Games like WoW and EVE have both casual and hardcore elements.
In WoW, you can log on for 30 minutes, complete a few quests, participate in a Battleground or a few Arena matches... and you are rewarded for this brief time investment. This is casual play.
Also in WoW, you can spend 4 hours in a 25 person raid instance and walk out with nothing but a repair bill for your gear. I would consider this a hardcore play experience. Your only reward could be that you have a better understanding of the encounter, or that your fellow Guild memebrs got a gear upgrade. Both of these rewards don't help you directly, i.e. you don't "get" anything, but the rewards are more long term.
To me, this differentiation between immediate reward and long-term investment is the major determination between "casual" and "hardcore."
So, pretty much, it's all about how you approach your time in the game. In a good MMO, you choose whether or not your play time is hardcore or casual. A good MMO will give you options for both.
In a poorly designed MMO, you don't have both options. You are either working towards some lofty end-goal or you get instant gratification but don't make any real long-term progress.
A game system that 'forces' you to invest a lot of time, especially if it's pre-arranged or during required time slots, is a "hardcore" system. Like scheduling 6-10 raiding Mon-Thursday. Very hardcore.
I think this is one of the many reasons why WoW is so successful. The game really give you the opportunity for both casual and hardcore play, and provides a very soft and lengthy learning curve to "guide" you from the more casual elements into the more hardcore game play.
So, to sum it up, to me it's all about the time you are required to invest and how you are rewarded for your investment.
The details of this game system vs. that don't matter so much, and are really just personal preference.
Speaking of investments, I am of the opinion that Free To Play MMOs are generally geared toward a more casual audience. Not having to pay any money to download and play these games is a major reason for that.
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Playing: Nothing
Played: Champions Online, CoX, STO, PSO, WoW, lots of free-to-play crap
Looking Forward To: DC Universe Online, Blade and Soul
Not so sure about that one.
Many of the F2P MMOs are very, very grind heavy. I'd consider killing the same mobs over and over and over for hours watching your XP bar slowly inch forward pretty "hardcore."
But I dunno, the monetary investment is indeed very casual... people love free... but the TIME investment to progress your character is fairly steep in my opinion
To me, "casual-friendly" is an indication of the degree to which someone with limited time and little desire to "study" the game can play at their own pace and still feel a sense of pride in their accomplishments and not fear that they will never "catch up".
In many ways it is the degree to which the hardcore are kept to a degree of progression that feels reachable by normal players, and normal players are kept within reach of the casual...so everything feels reachable and no one feels overly weak.
LotRO is probably about as close to achieving this of all the top MMORPGs, making it about the only game where even a newbie could join the game and not feel overwhelmed. But even they have some content that requires 4-6 hours which means casual players will never see it.
Hmmm, for me casual is not really the grind involved or the timesinks or anything like that. Casual for me is when I log onto a game for just a short time, but still can get something done.
WoW had that right. You could log on, even at level 68, play an hour just hitting mobs if you couldn't do anything else, you'd still see an increase in your experience (visible in the XP Bar). This made it easy to stick to leveling, because you knew you were getting there. Other games, like DAoC in the old day for example, you started up the game, you played for 3 hours, grinding mobs in one spot and the XP bar would hardly move at all...which was frustrating to say the least.
So, casual for me, is if I can play a game for a bit and still get a sense of accomplishment, be it from XP, or other sources. Granted, Timesinks and Grind-fests do usually guarantee a game is right in the category of "no 5 hours, no progress", but there can be exceptions sometimes. Not often though. ^_^
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Speaking of investments, I am of the opinion that Free To Play MMOs are generally geared toward a more casual audience. Not having to pay any money to download and play these games is a major reason for that.
True, but what about Runescape, all name calling aside, the skills in that game take an IMMENSE amount of time and it is browser-based and free.
The problem with WoW and any other raid based game is that time invested is not rewarded equally. A casual can invest 20 hours in a week, but over many play sessions and will never see the quality of rewards that a raider can get for spending 3 gaming sessions at 6 hours a piece, but the same overall time invested. This inequality is a major problem and Blizzard and other companies know this, but they continue with the status quo because casuals don't make enough noise about it, unlike raiders who are extremely vocal about their entitlements. Plus, many of the developers themselves are hardcore and are therefore very biased about what play style gets what, no matter how much time or effort is put into their specific style of play.
I don't play MMOs anymore and will not till this blatant bigotry is addressed and they either come out with a game that has no raiding period or where raiders don't get any special or preferential treatment in regards to better quality content or rewards.
With PvE raiding, it has never been a question of being "good enough". I play games to have fun, not to be a simpering toady sitting through hour after hour of mind numbing boredom and fawning over a guild master in the hopes that he will condescend to reward me with shiny bits of loot. But in games where those people get the highest progression, anyone who doesn't do that will just be a moving target for them and I'll be damned if I'm going to pay money for the privilege. - Neanderthal
I think hardcore rulesets (as I know them) would create a more casual playing environment. Why? The simple explanaion is because hardcore rulesets means PvP (and everything else) is not totally gear dependant, and we don't have to be so competetive for gear anymore. Also, there's no grinding to 'level up' in 'hardcore' rulesets, because there aren't 'levels.'
I could go on. But I think you understand if you've read this far.
- Phos
WoW is a game that's both casual and hardcore. Casual players can log in for an hour a day or every other day, do a few quests, kill a few mobs, buy and sell a few items, and eventually get their levels raised. Of course there is hardcore stuff like professions, working the AH, gear hunting, level grinding, doing raids, etc etc.
I'd say a "true" casual MMO, is one where someone who does not play games on a regular basis can sit down, and find it accessible and fun.
The dirty lil secret about the "casual" audience is this - they are not impressed by action/violence. What do I mean by that?
The most popular casual games out there are:
-Wii Sports
-Guitar Hero (and other games in that genre)
MMO which grabs lots of non-gamer casuals:
-Second Life
Notice a trend here? None of this involves hunting monsters or shooting things. Its not just games that deal with this "geek action" factor, comic books and sci-fi fantasy novel industries also deal with this. The mainstream books that sell scads of copies are books like, i dunno, the Kite Runner or 10 people you meet in heaven, etc etc.
I will jump in too because I consider myself a casual.
It is NOT just about the amount of time commitment. That has been discussed quite a lot in the thread so I am not going to talk about it more.
It is also about the STRESS of playing the game. WOW is casual because dying is not a big deal (if my wife wants me afk and I die, i don't have to spend the next 30 min doing corpse run).
It is about getting to the good part of the game playing a bit at a time. The craftable epic items on WOW are good examples.
It is about removing the stress of trying out new things like PvP. If I go PvP in WOW, i know I am not going to lose my epic item taking me 2 months to get.
It is about not spending time on mundane, non-fun, but realistic activities like walking from one city to the next. The flight path in WOW is an example. However, you do have to walk the first time so it is a fair trade-off in this case.
it's a game where the lead designers don't wear leather chaps and pull out the whips(for the player base to enjoy)
I find it amazing that by 2020 first world countries will be competing to get immigrants.
Smacking golf balls alone on a driving range for 10 hrs is technically playing golf. WIll you learn how to play better? Hardly. Or, you can play a round with a couple of skilled friends, learn a lot more. Its all in the quality of play. Solo grinding mobs should never reap the same rewards as completing a dungeon or raid simply because solo grinding mobs is EASY no matter how long you do it. Completing a dungeon is always harder than solo grinding. If you expect a solo dungeon in a MMO, go play Oblivion or FF. Risk vs reward. Solo play has zero risk. There is no conspiracy.
Since you don't play MMOs any more, how bored are you posting on a MMO related forum anyway=)
Smacking golf balls alone on a driving range for 10 hrs is technically playing golf. WIll you learn how to play better? Hardly. Or, you can play a round with a couple of skilled friends, learn a lot more. Its all in the quality of play. Solo grinding mobs should never reap the same rewards as completing a dungeon or raid simply because solo grinding mobs is EASY no matter how long you do it. Completing a dungeon is always harder than solo grinding. If you expect a solo dungeon in a MMO, go play Oblivion or FF. Risk vs reward. Solo play has zero risk. There is no conspiracy.
Since you don't play MMOs any more, how bored are you posting on a MMO related forum anyway=)
this guy loves what the other guy considers the whip.
so you're pretty much saying here. you're not having fun my way and I don't want you to have fun your way.
GAMES HAVE NO RISK.
If you consider a game to have risk, it's not a game to you. the only way a game has risk is if you consider time invested to not be fun, then losing that invested time. if you ever fall into this trap it's time to re-evaluate yourself, your plans, and what is actually fun.
I find it amazing that by 2020 first world countries will be competing to get immigrants.