Yeah a couple big EQ-tilted trolls going around lately.
Should rename these types of threads, "My desires are niche, but why aren't games designed exclusively for me?"...which is, of course, an answer and a question all in one.
Agreed
This ranks up there with the constant whine for SWG/sandboxes/crafter based economies.
BTW...just cause a few trolls are spouting about EQ doesnt mean all the EQ fans are such :P
My ideal MMO would be a themepark between WOW and EQ1...but dont think I will see it. That is OK though. As a themepark fan, I am not stuck lamenting the fact that I belong to a niche, of a niche, pertaining to my gaming style.
OP: Get over it. Money talks, QQing walks. If you want a game that appeals to your gaming style, then look at independant studios. No major publisher is going to launch a mega million title aimed at a minority playerbase.
Asking Devs to make AAA sandbox titles is like trying to get fine dining on a McDonalds dollar menu budget.
I dont remember MMOs being about casual play at all....
Oh wait, UO was built around casual social play, and that came before the EQ 'Sign away your life here' style gameplay.
So nevermind, you arent doing it wrong
As for the topic:
Casual players play MMOs for the same reasons these so called 'Hardcore' players do - because its fun. There is no law or unwritten rule that states MMO are meant only for those who wish to give up their lives in the quest for loot or recognition. MMOs started off as social worlds that were designed for people to play in (both casually and not so casually). It was really only around the time of the EQ raider that the hardcore mentality appeared.
Sure some MMOs are being designed with every playstyle in mind (because why shoot yourself in the foot when trying to make money? Thats all these companies are about, selling a product and making as much coin off it as they can, no matter what the devs/company claim otherwise.
As for games like WoW getting easier... That happens to every game as they age. They have to find ways of keeping the players they have happy while also trying to keep a steady influx of new players coming in. As a game ages, its population tends to become top heavy. Being top heavy makes it harder for new players to get in on the fun (Look at EQ. The game was really top heavy and the newb areas were almost deserted. New players had a bitch of a time leveling up due to being almost totally alone). This lead to game mechanics changing to allow those new player to get deeper into the game. Fast travel was added to make finding groups easier as well (spending 2 hours in Zone A looking for a group only to give up and deciding to try Zone H, which would take an additional hour to run to with a possiblility of standing LFG for another 2 hours is just a waste of time in most peoples eyes).
And while I myself like a more challenging game and am willing to spend hours upon hours playing a game every day, I can also accept the fact that games need as many players as they can get to stay alive. I can also accept the fact that with a games age compromises need to be made in the name of balance and playablity (sometimes what was a challenge when the game was new becomes a hinderence when the game gets older).
There are 3 types of people in the world. 1.) Those who make things happen 2.) Those who watch things happen 3.) And those who wonder "What the %#*& just happened?!"
Still find it funny that almost everyone associates time with "hardcore" and "casual". So if I put my raft into Townlake and just paddle around for four hours I am more hardcore than someone who does a 45 minute Class 6 whitewater run?
Casual= Someone who wants no challenge while playing. Their dream is great rewards for minimal effort.
Hardcore= Someone who wants to overcome obstacles tougher than themselves. Their dream is to survive tasks that have very little chance of success no matter how much time they can invest.
These definitions seem accurate
Exept for the part about casuals and challenge, I refer you to my post 3 pages back.....
"As a casual I raided occasionally and ran end game group dungeons on a nightly basis, never needed the easy way out once. On top of that I invested upwards of 6 hours a day playing."
I ran with a guild full of casuals who played the exact same way. The only real difference between casuals and hardcores is that casuals manage their time and multitask better.
For the last time you were not a casual player!!!!!!! 6 hours a day? playing everynight? give us a break.
Unfortuantley, your label for me doesn't matter. Since when did you become the leading authority on a gaming style you obviously have never participated in?
Casual = available time played in a mmo.
6 hours a day x 7 days a week = Not fucking casual!!!!!!!!!!
.... and where are the studies snd statistics to prove this?
You play all fucking day bro. 6+ hours a day? How can you even call youself casual? Your not casual you just suck ass, realize this and get over it.
Seriously where the hell do you 30+ hour a week tools get off claiming casual play? because you dont spend every second raiding you dont play a lot? wtf is that?
Um, I would not call that casual play, but I would call it semi-casual play.
I use to play WoW 3-6 hour day Sunday thru Wednesday. Thursday thru Saturday I'd clock 20 hours on play time over my "weekend" ususally hitting about 30 to 40 hours of playtime in a week. I call myself as a semi-casual player.
I play a bit too much to call myself just casual but I'm not a hardcore player either, thus semi-casual.
BTW Who said Casual don't want a challenge?
WTF are you smoking?
Maybe not all, but some casuals want a challenge, just not a large time commitment attached to said challenge.
We learned that the definition of casual and hardcore is completely subjective. Everyone has their own definition making it a moot point to even argue about it.
Just to piss off Basement dwellers and it works every time.
What?
This sword here at my side dont act the way it should Keeps calling me its master, but I feel like its slave Hauling me faster and faster to an early, early grave And it howls! it howls like hell!
There still plenty of alternatives out there, why you bother with why casuals play WoW?
For me that game sucks so i dont care if many play it dont go to forums where they talk about themeparks i just mainly ignore all casual games and there players and problem solved hehe.
You OP make a to bigga deal of this relax go play sandbox many still out there go have some fun instead whine here hehe.
Games played:AC1-Darktide'99-2000-AC2-Darktide/dawnsong2003-2005,Lineage2-2005-2006 and now Darkfall-2009..... In between WoW few months AoC few months and some f2p also all very short few weeks.
We learned that the definition of casual and hardcore is completely subjective. Everyone has their own definition making it a moot point to even argue about it.
This... are we learning yet? probably not....
My defenition is casuals play WoW
, hardcore play Darkfall:)
Others prolly have a different defenition of whats a causal or hardcore i dont realy care, its in there own good right to have other opinion its just not mine hehe.
Games played:AC1-Darktide'99-2000-AC2-Darktide/dawnsong2003-2005,Lineage2-2005-2006 and now Darkfall-2009..... In between WoW few months AoC few months and some f2p also all very short few weeks.
Casuals play mmo's because they are fun BUT we have real life commitments that result in a casual playstyle being the only option.
This is a description of me. Full time job, wife two young kids, like sports and other stuff too. But MMOs and RPGs have always been a passion of mine. Just because you can't commit the time doesn't mean you don't want to.
Other than that, because they are fun to play, casual or hardcore and I don't understand why the OP thinks this is a problem, MMOs with only hardcore players tend to be pretty empty.
I'm an adult with responsabilities. I have a job and friends (not online only) I have children, a wife, bills to pay, and a metal band i play in. So i have about 8-10 hours a week to devote to gaming, sometimes more on the weekends. I wish i had more time, but reality says casual for me. I enjoy every minute of my gaming. I love it.
Casuals play mmo's because they are fun BUT we have real life commitments that result in a casual playstyle being the only option.
This is a description of me. Full time job, wife two young kids, like sports and other stuff too. But MMOs and RPGs have always been a passion of mine. Just because you can't commit the time doesn't mean you don't want to.
Other than that, because they are fun to play, casual or hardcore and I don't understand why the OP thinks this is a problem, MMOs with only hardcore players tend to be pretty empty.
Still find it funny that almost everyone associates time with "hardcore" and "casual". So if I put my raft into Townlake and just paddle around for four hours I am more hardcore than someone who does a 45 minute Class 6 whitewater run?
Casual= Someone who wants no challenge while playing. Their dream is great rewards for minimal effort.
Hardcore= Someone who wants to overcome obstacles tougher than themselves. Their dream is to survive tasks that have very little chance of success no matter how much time they can invest.
These definitions seem accurate
Exept for the part about casuals and challenge, I refer you to my post 3 pages back.....
"As a casual I raided occasionally and ran end game group dungeons on a nightly basis, never needed the easy way out once. On top of that I invested upwards of 6 hours a day playing."
I ran with a guild full of casuals who played the exact same way. The only real difference between casuals and hardcores is that casuals manage their time and multitask better.
For the last time you were not a casual player!!!!!!! 6 hours a day? playing everynight? give us a break.
Unfortuantley, your label for me doesn't matter. Since when did you become the leading authority on a gaming style you obviously have never participated in?
Casual = available time played in a mmo.
6 hours a day x 7 days a week = Not fucking casual!!!!!!!!!!
.... and where are the studies snd statistics to prove this?
You play all fucking day bro. 6+ hours a day? How can you even call youself casual? Your not casual you just suck ass, realize this and get over it.
Seriously where the hell do you 30+ hour a week tools get off claiming casual play? because you dont spend every second raiding you dont play a lot? wtf is that?
Um, I would not call that casual play, but I would call it semi-casual play.
I use to play WoW 3-6 hour day Sunday thru Wednesday. Thursday thru Saturday I'd clock 20 hours on play time over my "weekend" ususally hitting about 30 to 40 hours of playtime in a week. I call myself as a semi-casual player.
I play a bit too much to call myself just casual but I'm not a hardcore player either, thus semi-casual.
BTW Who said Casual don't want a challenge?
WTF are you smoking?
Maybe not all, but some casuals want a challenge, just not a large time commitment attached to said challenge.
I'm afraid to ask you how many hours you think a hardcore invest in a game.
I use to play "hardcore." Hardcore is everything BUT time invested. It's about putting the game priorities above anything else. It's about planning your work load to make sure that it never runs into you raid schedule. It's about cutting time with patners and lying to them because you didn't want to tell them what you were doing on Friday night. It's about missing out on other games because you are dedicated to one game and the sucess of progressing through it. It's about posting and requesting a day off so you can go to a RL event. That being said...I never played more than 15 hours a week.
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.
Can you link to posts where:
Casual players have stated that they do not want to invest time n an MMO.
Casual players have stated want to remove any time consuming activities.
Casual players have stated just want to be level 80 with max gear.
I realize that it's extremely common on these forums for someone to post even the most bizarre claims as fact and then get 7 pages of people discussing it rather than questioning the veracity of the claims to begin with, but on the off chance there is any basis to your position, I'd like to see proof of it first.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
I would gladly play a fps like game over mmos anytime... IF:
1. The game is in third person, instead of first person
2. Theres no guns in it, only mele fighting and magic
if you give me a pointer to a game like that i would gladly play it, because leveling in mmos is just lame, and battleground style mine games is the only fun i got in an mmo anyways.
Something that is definitly not working is: Stopping playing for a few days, jumping out of the shadows, get the girl and bring her home to the nerd lair, where you start playing hardcore again..
World of warcraft is anything but casual, unless you call relentles, endless essential loot grinding through pvp and pve casual. The people getting to 80 in 2 weeks are hardcores who are playing for 12 hours a day, not the people playing for 5 hours a week.
I would gladly play a fps like game over mmos anytime... IF:
1. The game is in third person, instead of first person
2. Theres no guns in it, only mele fighting and magic
if you give me a pointer to a game like that i would gladly play it, because leveling in mmos is just lame, and battleground style mine games is the only fun i got in an mmo anyways.
Id post actual links if this new editor wasnt such a pile of shite, but..
Kingdoms Collide (HL2 mod) Third person magic/melee/bow em up.
Savage 2 (ftp stand alone game) third person melee/magic, first person ranged weapons and some spells.
Age of Chivalry (HL2 mod) melee fighting, though not third person.
There's also the fact that some casuals really URGE to be hard core. If they had the time they WOULD play 12 hours straight every day. Maybe they won't be grinding or going as fast as true hard cores but they'd still be technically 'playing'. They'd be willing to do things such as raids and pvp, but (usually) most casuals have more responsibilities and priorities than hardcores (again, usually).
Me, I plan on going to medical school in a couple years and I don't even want to think about how decimal my free time will be to play MMO's, and it only gets harder when I go into residency. Playing 5-7 hours a week (if that) would designate me as "casual", but that still doesn't mean I don't want to play hardcore.
and also, you can't really categorize casual and hardcore by playtime. Although they have high correlations, there some people who play for 12 hours and don't get much done or focus on crafting, or leisure pvp and pve, while others who play for 2 hours work the hardest and progress that much more. So which is the casual and which is the hardcore?
While this question invites flames, I will say that for the most part this "casual" group tends to want to change games that already exist in a time consumption state, rather than just play the games that don't have time consuming activites already.
Pasttime. Aspiration. Curiosity. The list could be generated for one demographic and readily applied to any. It should be noted that although a key ingredient to RPG's (and their MMO variety) is a progressive, permanent advancement system, it plays *against* a level playing field, which is what casuals often cry for. Take a FPS that offers a generic avatar, battle system etc that remains static across all levels of play, the only delta is player skill.
Personalization. That would be the word I'd put my money on. A touch of self.
That is exactly right, and we're not saying NO to save WoW, because it is already a lost cause. We are saying NO to dissuade the next group of greedy suits who decide to emulate Blizzard and Cryptic, etc. We can prevent some of the future games from spewing this crap, but the sooner we start saying no, the better the results will be. So - Stand up, pull up your pants, and walk away. - MMO_Doubter
Something that is definitly not working is: Stopping playing for a few days, jumping out of the shadows, get the girl and bring her home to the nerd lair, where you start playing hardcore again..
I was making a point about generalizations but hey, take it however you want.
Well, time investment doesn't mean that there is a challenge.
Let's take it to an extreme example.
I can imagine a game where each thing you kill only gives you 1 xp. It takes millions to get to top level but each thing you kill is easy. So it will take you a while but chance of death is minimal, no real risk.
Or, I can make it so that leveling as far as xp to be rather low but each fight is very challenging as far as strategy and tactics. As far as death penalty I've yet to be convinced that this is not subjective and that one person's death penatly is another's person lack of penalty. For me I do hate losing. even if I lost nothing I still feel the shame of losing. Other's don't feel this shame and require a slap on the hand.
The problem I see with posts like yours is that you are being extremely narrow in your view as to what an mmo has to have or be.
doesn't have to gave grinding. It all can be quest based in that each quest objective has to be finished but none of the mobs you kill give you xp. You only get xp for finsing the quest. It also doesn't ahve to be "kill x of y". Look at DDO's quests. Most of them (except some of the kill quests) have a definitive objective and THAT is what gives you xp.
An mmo can be anything the devs want it to be. Problem is that they want players to keep subscribing so they give their games a bit of a grind. Personally I loved the grind in Linage 2. However, I would NEVER recommend that to anyone I knew because it's insane. How can you tell a person who is not already into an mmo that they have to kill things over and over? It's mad.
No reasonable person would do it.
But tell them that they have quest objectives and through it all they have to fight their way through a certain amount of enemies and they might be fine with it.
You've got to expand your thought on what an mmo "has" to be. Casual players are not adverse to challenge just because they are casual. They are adverse to spending hours and hours of time for minimal results and repetitive game play.
It seems to me that in order for you to understand "casuals" you might think of shifting your paradigm just a wee bit.
Yeah, or your MMORPG can be like.. it takes 100 kills to reahc level 80, and each kill is really easy because your game is called WoW.
What game has challenging fights again? Not WoW
EQ had challenging exp spots, any indoor zone was a challenge, any camp was a challenge. Challenge in leveling is now gone. It's been replaced with trivial & retarded quest systems. Go kill 5 bears, Go kill 10 bears, Find some hay, Go kill 5 snails, Talk to NPC in another town, Kill more snails.
Yeah, real awesome quest system. I don't want to do quests anymore, because they are retarded. There is more meaning in an MMORPG where you define your own quest then let some idiot do it. Let some idiot, who probably doesn't even play the genre define how you should play the game from 1-80. I wan't to level how I want to, not how someone at Blizzard wants me to. I don't want to follow a cheap and shitty linear quest system to level, I want to explore and find my own leveling spots, because I have a brain, and I can think, and I can find exp spots without having someone tell me where I should level all the time via quest systems.
Killing things over and over isn't bad if it is challenging. Too bad in WoW it isn't. It's a boring grind. All they've done is shorten the time it takes to get to 80. They made the grind worse than EQ because it's boring. At least when I'm leveling in EQ I could actually die when I play like shit. Think you can do that in WoW? No. My priests can go to sleep while I am MTing a boss in their instances and I would be fine. There's no challenge there.
Did you not read a single thing I wrote? Did you not see the "paradigm shift" part?
forget what you know about quests. This seems to be a hang up for you. And stop ranting on wow as that is not your main argument. you have a problem with the idea of casual players. WoW is not the end all and be all of mmo's.
A quest is just a set of objectives. it doesn't have to have to be "kill x of y". I've already said that. this is why I used the DDO example.
It doesn't have to be a linear quest system either.
And as of now, mobs are powerups, nothing more or less. And yes, killing mobs over and over again can be tedious "more so" if they are a challenge. Reason being is that after you kill one mob or set of mobs that has all sorts of tricks and traps you then have to do it all over again and again and again. After a while that gets tiring. It's still a treadmill it's just a tricky treadmill. And maintaining momentum after each challenging mob is going to get tiring for players.
As an example I'll give you dragon age. In this game (no matter what anyone thinks about it) it is possible to run into some rather hard encounters. It is also possbile to wipe. So there is your challenge. However, doing so over and over again (if you wipe so that you have to do it over and over again) tends to get tiring. Oh, it's fun, but by no means can I emotionally (to use a word - not sure if it is the right one) do such an encounter over and over again. It just gets draining. For instance, I just finished the final fight in "Awaking". I crashed during the first run and succeeded after the 3rd run. I then thought to run it again and after loading it felt that I was a bit tired ( and drained) and felt better of it. It took a bit out of me.
It's why in these games you have boss fights and everything else. You need the balance or it gets tiring. To have a 5 minute or more fight (and actually time 5 minutes on one fight it's quite a bit of time) for each mob might be fun but one is going to do that for only so long before they need a break. That is why grinding works so well in these games, because it doesn't take 5 minutes per mob therefore the "win" each time keeps you going.
But in no way do quests have to be "get 10 quests to kill 5 of each mob and turn them in". It's just how devs have chosen to make these games. But this has nothing to do with your first statement about casuals.
As I've already said "casual players" don't necessarily want easy. They just want to do it in a reasonable amount of time and probably don't want their game to be inundated with tedium as they don't have a lot of time.
Does this mean that there aren't players who don't want to do anything but who want to parade around in top gear like a peacock? No. But that has nothign to do with being casual. That is an entirely different issue.
edit: as a point of note, there have been several developers articles on this site where the devs mention making harder fights. And what do the players do? They find fights that are easier and try to bypass the harder fights. It's only human nature to find the easiest way to do things. In Lineage 2 there was an area that was exceptionally hard, especially for mages. but the xp was decent if you could handle it because hardly anyone went there, so you had the area to yourself. And no one went there because it was so hard.
Well, the easy content should have shitty loot. Of course if you have hard and easy content with the same rewards, people will flock to the easy content. Easy content should give bad exp, bad loot, but be reliable. Hard content should give either good exp or good loot (or both if its really hard), but not be reliable. I want fights where a bunch of NPCS can spawn on my group and we need to have a solid group to hold a camp. Frenzied ghoul, KC camps, etc. were good examples of tough camps. Sometimes a roaming NPC would come into your camp area when you are in the middle of a huge fight. Sometimes you needed an enchanter to CC 5-6 NPCs at once.
PVE just is too predictable in most MMORPGs anymore. EQ had randomized spawn timers, randomized NPC spawns, roaming NPCs, and the NPCs in EQ were just a lot stronger than the kinds you encounter in most newer MMORPGs. EQ NPCs could 1 shot your healers, your enchanters, etc. It wasn't a joke, you needed a good solid group to hold down good camps..
PVE is a joke anymore. Not only in the zones you exp in, but also in the raid zones. If MMORPGs brought this back I would actually play them, but there is no longer a challenge in most things in an MMORPG. They basically ditched hard content because they view leveling as "unnecessary" and a waste of time. So instead of putting in hard content they put in easy content that no one finds fun. Why don't they just start people out at 60 if they are going to dumb content down to the point of it not being challenging at all?
There's a difference between hardcore vs. casual play and easy vs. challenging play.
Grinding for 10 hours isn't necessarily challenging, but it is hardcore. Personally I have no interest in crap like that even if I can play for 10 hours. While many old school MMOs had challenges, they had a heck of a lot of insanely boring grinding for EVERYTHING. They also typically had a lot of time wasted traveling about, ime. Personally I don't want to waste a lot of time before I get to the fun stuff, I want to get to the fun stuff right away. I don't really think a lot of people ENJOY doing this (and it certainly isn't good game design).*
Yeah, travel is such a bad thing in MMORPGs. Instead, you should just pick what area you want to be in on start up. Right? Because then it will really feel like a real World, when you can pick where you want to be without having to travel through a continuous world.
They need to ditch the portal shit, I never liked that. What happened to traveling a world via boat, or blimp, or whatever? Now its all portals all over the place. I can get from any part of the world to any other part of the world in less than 5 minutes. What kind of world is that?
Travel should be brought back into MMORPGs. It should take long to travel across a huge world. They should add mounts, whatever.. for people who actually work hard and want to reduce travel time. But giving everyone portals is just wrong. They only make the game cheap and less immersive.
Comments
Agreed
This ranks up there with the constant whine for SWG/sandboxes/crafter based economies.
BTW...just cause a few trolls are spouting about EQ doesnt mean all the EQ fans are such :P
My ideal MMO would be a themepark between WOW and EQ1...but dont think I will see it. That is OK though. As a themepark fan, I am not stuck lamenting the fact that I belong to a niche, of a niche, pertaining to my gaming style.
OP: Get over it. Money talks, QQing walks. If you want a game that appeals to your gaming style, then look at independant studios. No major publisher is going to launch a mega million title aimed at a minority playerbase.
Asking Devs to make AAA sandbox titles is like trying to get fine dining on a McDonalds dollar menu budget.
Apparently you are...
I dont remember MMOs being about casual play at all....
Oh wait, UO was built around casual social play, and that came before the EQ 'Sign away your life here' style gameplay.
So nevermind, you arent doing it wrong
As for the topic:
Casual players play MMOs for the same reasons these so called 'Hardcore' players do - because its fun. There is no law or unwritten rule that states MMO are meant only for those who wish to give up their lives in the quest for loot or recognition. MMOs started off as social worlds that were designed for people to play in (both casually and not so casually). It was really only around the time of the EQ raider that the hardcore mentality appeared.
Sure some MMOs are being designed with every playstyle in mind (because why shoot yourself in the foot when trying to make money? Thats all these companies are about, selling a product and making as much coin off it as they can, no matter what the devs/company claim otherwise.
As for games like WoW getting easier... That happens to every game as they age. They have to find ways of keeping the players they have happy while also trying to keep a steady influx of new players coming in. As a game ages, its population tends to become top heavy. Being top heavy makes it harder for new players to get in on the fun (Look at EQ. The game was really top heavy and the newb areas were almost deserted. New players had a bitch of a time leveling up due to being almost totally alone). This lead to game mechanics changing to allow those new player to get deeper into the game. Fast travel was added to make finding groups easier as well (spending 2 hours in Zone A looking for a group only to give up and deciding to try Zone H, which would take an additional hour to run to with a possiblility of standing LFG for another 2 hours is just a waste of time in most peoples eyes).
And while I myself like a more challenging game and am willing to spend hours upon hours playing a game every day, I can also accept the fact that games need as many players as they can get to stay alive. I can also accept the fact that with a games age compromises need to be made in the name of balance and playablity (sometimes what was a challenge when the game was new becomes a hinderence when the game gets older).
There are 3 types of people in the world.
1.) Those who make things happen
2.) Those who watch things happen
3.) And those who wonder "What the %#*& just happened?!"
Um, I would not call that casual play, but I would call it semi-casual play.
I use to play WoW 3-6 hour day Sunday thru Wednesday. Thursday thru Saturday I'd clock 20 hours on play time over my "weekend" ususally hitting about 30 to 40 hours of playtime in a week. I call myself as a semi-casual player.
I play a bit too much to call myself just casual but I'm not a hardcore player either, thus semi-casual.
BTW Who said Casual don't want a challenge?
WTF are you smoking?
Maybe not all, but some casuals want a challenge, just not a large time commitment attached to said challenge.
Posted by tryce430 on 3/27/10 at 10:57:15 PM
So what have we learned today?
We learned that the definition of casual and hardcore is completely subjective. Everyone has their own definition making it a moot point to even argue about it.
This... are we learning yet? probably not....
HEAVEN OR HELL
Duel 1
Lets ROCK!
Just to piss off Basement dwellers and it works every time.
What?
This sword here at my side dont act the way it should
Keeps calling me its master, but I feel like its slave
Hauling me faster and faster to an early, early grave
And it howls! it howls like hell!
There still plenty of alternatives out there, why you bother with why casuals play WoW?
For me that game sucks so i dont care if many play it dont go to forums where they talk about themeparks i just mainly ignore all casual games and there players and problem solved hehe.
You OP make a to bigga deal of this relax go play sandbox many still out there go have some fun instead whine here hehe.
Games played:AC1-Darktide'99-2000-AC2-Darktide/dawnsong2003-2005,Lineage2-2005-2006 and now Darkfall-2009.....
In between WoW few months AoC few months and some f2p also all very short few weeks.
My defenition is casuals play WoW
, hardcore play Darkfall:)
Others prolly have a different defenition of whats a causal or hardcore i dont realy care, its in there own good right to have other opinion its just not mine hehe.
Games played:AC1-Darktide'99-2000-AC2-Darktide/dawnsong2003-2005,Lineage2-2005-2006 and now Darkfall-2009.....
In between WoW few months AoC few months and some f2p also all very short few weeks.
This is a description of me. Full time job, wife two young kids, like sports and other stuff too. But MMOs and RPGs have always been a passion of mine. Just because you can't commit the time doesn't mean you don't want to.
Other than that, because they are fun to play, casual or hardcore and I don't understand why the OP thinks this is a problem, MMOs with only hardcore players tend to be pretty empty.
I'm an adult with responsabilities. I have a job and friends (not online only) I have children, a wife, bills to pay, and a metal band i play in. So i have about 8-10 hours a week to devote to gaming, sometimes more on the weekends. I wish i had more time, but reality says casual for me. I enjoy every minute of my gaming. I love it.
I totally hear you brother.
I'm afraid to ask you how many hours you think a hardcore invest in a game.
I use to play "hardcore." Hardcore is everything BUT time invested. It's about putting the game priorities above anything else. It's about planning your work load to make sure that it never runs into you raid schedule. It's about cutting time with patners and lying to them because you didn't want to tell them what you were doing on Friday night. It's about missing out on other games because you are dedicated to one game and the sucess of progressing through it. It's about posting and requesting a day off so you can go to a RL event. That being said...I never played more than 15 hours a week.
Thank God I was freed from that bondage...
Can you link to posts where:
Casual players have stated that they do not want to invest time n an MMO.
Casual players have stated want to remove any time consuming activities.
Casual players have stated just want to be level 80 with max gear.
I realize that it's extremely common on these forums for someone to post even the most bizarre claims as fact and then get 7 pages of people discussing it rather than questioning the veracity of the claims to begin with, but on the off chance there is any basis to your position, I'd like to see proof of it first.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
I would gladly play a fps like game over mmos anytime... IF:
1. The game is in third person, instead of first person
2. Theres no guns in it, only mele fighting and magic
if you give me a pointer to a game like that i would gladly play it, because leveling in mmos is just lame, and battleground style mine games is the only fun i got in an mmo anyways.
Probably about the same as me, just will a different mindset.
Being Hardcore, in my mind, isn't time invested.... but a state of mind... I don't have it.
I'm neither Hardcore nor Casual I'm the inbetween... so I call myself semi-casual.
I still stand by my previous statement of
Casual = Sex getting mofos
Hardcore = Virgins
That made perfect sence, good one.
Its not really what you do, its who you are..
Something that is definitly not working is: Stopping playing for a few days, jumping out of the shadows, get the girl and bring her home to the nerd lair, where you start playing hardcore again..
World of warcraft is anything but casual, unless you call relentles, endless essential loot grinding through pvp and pve casual. The people getting to 80 in 2 weeks are hardcores who are playing for 12 hours a day, not the people playing for 5 hours a week.
Id post actual links if this new editor wasnt such a pile of shite, but..
Kingdoms Collide (HL2 mod) Third person magic/melee/bow em up.
Savage 2 (ftp stand alone game) third person melee/magic, first person ranged weapons and some spells.
Age of Chivalry (HL2 mod) melee fighting, though not third person.
youtube and google them
There's also the fact that some casuals really URGE to be hard core. If they had the time they WOULD play 12 hours straight every day. Maybe they won't be grinding or going as fast as true hard cores but they'd still be technically 'playing'. They'd be willing to do things such as raids and pvp, but (usually) most casuals have more responsibilities and priorities than hardcores (again, usually).
Me, I plan on going to medical school in a couple years and I don't even want to think about how decimal my free time will be to play MMO's, and it only gets harder when I go into residency. Playing 5-7 hours a week (if that) would designate me as "casual", but that still doesn't mean I don't want to play hardcore.
and also, you can't really categorize casual and hardcore by playtime. Although they have high correlations, there some people who play for 12 hours and don't get much done or focus on crafting, or leisure pvp and pve, while others who play for 2 hours work the hardest and progress that much more. So which is the casual and which is the hardcore?
While this question invites flames, I will say that for the most part this "casual" group tends to want to change games that already exist in a time consumption state, rather than just play the games that don't have time consuming activites already.
Pasttime. Aspiration. Curiosity. The list could be generated for one demographic and readily applied to any. It should be noted that although a key ingredient to RPG's (and their MMO variety) is a progressive, permanent advancement system, it plays *against* a level playing field, which is what casuals often cry for. Take a FPS that offers a generic avatar, battle system etc that remains static across all levels of play, the only delta is player skill.
Personalization. That would be the word I'd put my money on. A touch of self.
That is exactly right, and we're not saying NO to save WoW, because it is already a lost cause. We are saying NO to dissuade the next group of greedy suits who decide to emulate Blizzard and Cryptic, etc.
We can prevent some of the future games from spewing this crap, but the sooner we start saying no, the better the results will be.
So - Stand up, pull up your pants, and walk away.
- MMO_Doubter
I was making a point about generalizations but hey, take it however you want.
Well, the easy content should have shitty loot. Of course if you have hard and easy content with the same rewards, people will flock to the easy content. Easy content should give bad exp, bad loot, but be reliable. Hard content should give either good exp or good loot (or both if its really hard), but not be reliable. I want fights where a bunch of NPCS can spawn on my group and we need to have a solid group to hold a camp. Frenzied ghoul, KC camps, etc. were good examples of tough camps. Sometimes a roaming NPC would come into your camp area when you are in the middle of a huge fight. Sometimes you needed an enchanter to CC 5-6 NPCs at once.
PVE just is too predictable in most MMORPGs anymore. EQ had randomized spawn timers, randomized NPC spawns, roaming NPCs, and the NPCs in EQ were just a lot stronger than the kinds you encounter in most newer MMORPGs. EQ NPCs could 1 shot your healers, your enchanters, etc. It wasn't a joke, you needed a good solid group to hold down good camps..
PVE is a joke anymore. Not only in the zones you exp in, but also in the raid zones. If MMORPGs brought this back I would actually play them, but there is no longer a challenge in most things in an MMORPG. They basically ditched hard content because they view leveling as "unnecessary" and a waste of time. So instead of putting in hard content they put in easy content that no one finds fun. Why don't they just start people out at 60 if they are going to dumb content down to the point of it not being challenging at all?
Casuals say: "Hardcore players have no lives, no jobs, they live in their parents basements and live life through mmos."
Hardcores say: "Casuals suck at the game, they need an easy game to play with rewards for logging in."
Both groups spin it so it makes them look and feel better when in reality the difference between the two is time invested.
That's it.
Playing: Rift, LotRO
Waiting on: GW2, BP
Yeah, travel is such a bad thing in MMORPGs. Instead, you should just pick what area you want to be in on start up. Right? Because then it will really feel like a real World, when you can pick where you want to be without having to travel through a continuous world.
They need to ditch the portal shit, I never liked that. What happened to traveling a world via boat, or blimp, or whatever? Now its all portals all over the place. I can get from any part of the world to any other part of the world in less than 5 minutes. What kind of world is that?
Travel should be brought back into MMORPGs. It should take long to travel across a huge world. They should add mounts, whatever.. for people who actually work hard and want to reduce travel time. But giving everyone portals is just wrong. They only make the game cheap and less immersive.