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If I were a developer, what kind of gamer are you?
LeegOfChldrn
Member Posts: 364
edit: accidentally hit "enter" before I was finished with the poll or the categories.
Although an odd title, I believe that before a developer designs, it is important for him/her to mark the type of gamer they're after. Are you developing for the biggest profit? Casual gamers? Hardcore niche gamers? Morons? Veterans? Desperate Housewives? Horny Teenagers? Now before many of you reply "Oh oh oh! The horny teenager one!" in a desperate attempt for more in-game boob, please realize these are serious questions which I believe developers should ask themselves.
What I am actually curious about is "What type of gamer are you?". To answer this question, I believe there needs to be key categories and clear definitions rather than vague labels such as "Hardcore" or "Newb".
I please ask that any who reply in this thread, regardless of their answers, be treated with respect and no judgement on their lives. As many of you may be unaware that the "no-life nerds" who make up some of the more hardcore MMORPGers may in fact be disabled humans who, against their wishes, have so much free time that MMO's become their "life". I personally know of several friends who are physically disabled and bed-ridden, and MMO's are a life-saver socially and to cure the inevitable boredom. Thank you, and now on you "Who are you?" section!
***CATEGORIES***
TIME PLAYED
Is this game your weekend hobby, your daily relaxer, or your life? How often do you play? How long is each "session" of play? Arguably this can often set our definitions of "Casual Gamer" vs "Hardcore Player". Whether a lazy teen playing out of boredom or a busy adult with a static hobby, I believe that a developer should ask himself if he is going to cater towards those who only have an hour a session to play, how long a "session" will take, or if the game is designed for those fortunate or unfortunate enough to make a MMO their "life"--- or both!
GAMEPLAY TYPE
What type of gameplay do you enjoy? PvP, PvE, or both? Is Crafting/Trade, Exploring, or Travel important to you? What type of PvE, PvP? Which is most important?
PLAYER HATE
Don't hate the player, hate the game. What destroys your fun or immersion the most? Player Griefing? Lack of FFA PvP? Instancing? Too much PvP? The scary, icky, yucky (teehee) idea of PERMADEATH? The simple fact you can't cause permadeath on the 13 year old harassing you? Voice Acting Storylines featuring Jedi where your decisions don't actually matter? I believe it is important for a developer, when designing, to focus on areas of hatred and frustration just as much as it is to focus on the type of gameplay or casual/hardcore stance. It is quite clear that a game like Darkfall caters to a different audience than say, Vanguard, which caters to a different audience than say, WoW.
SUMMARY- THE PLAYERBASE
I have to cut this short, my apologies, but all of these categories (and much, much more I couldn't get into or additional categories to do) make up the PLAYER type the developer wishes to cater towards. In my opinion, shooting for the maximum profit is a big loss and a primary reason most new MMO's fail as "WoW clones". Simply put, the PLAYERBASE needs to be specific. Once this is determined, however broad or niche-- the budget can THEN be assigned based on the estimated playerbase. Nothing is here to stop a permadeath hardcore MMO only for the lifeless to appear AAA quality. Its budget would just be very small compared to a MMO wishing to steal the WoW playerbase. Profit is profit, and a game cheaply made can cater to a smaller audience in a much more profitable manner than a horrendously over-expensive game catered toward an audience so big it parasites and leaves after the first free month, leaving the company to QQ as it screams "WHY DIDNT WE PROFIT?!!?!?!"
THE ULTIMATE QUESTION is... What type of playerbase do YOU want to see developers design a game for? Any playerbase, as niche or as cliche as you desire-- keeping in mind that the more niche, the smaller the budget...BUT that the original greats (Everquest, Ultima) were created with very small budgets compared to games like the newly released SWTOR or upcoming Guild Wars 2. Budget means very little in my opinion, as some of the best games are cheaply made.
Comments
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
Here, have my life story.
When I was younger in elementary school and my entire life before that, I pretty much played games all the time when not in school or at a friend's house from 1985 to the 90s. I was actually a well balanced kid, climbing trees, playing soccer and track stuff, very social kid when I was young. I was at a friend's house every weekend. I was extremely close to my best friend especially. We pretty much grew up together even though we went to separate schools. But yeah I had friends at my school also that I did stuff with. Wasn't popular but I had circles.
When Junior High Football started that was around the time I got cable internet service upgraded from 56k internet. Instead of playing games I was playing football all the time but any extra time was spent playing games. This is when my grades started dropping hard because of football.
This taught me a lesson about time. I can't play video games with my friends in Infantry Zone, play football, AND go to school. I would have to get my priorities straight.
So I stopped playing football. I regret it to some extent. However, one of my friends I met online dropped out of high school. So it's like we both gave up something of our lives to be together online. Friendship like that doesn't come and go. I don't know what was going on in his life, but we both sacrificed parts of our real lives to be a part of something new, this new internet life that we shared. We began to play MMORPGs like Dark Age of Camelot, Shadowbane, Lineage II, etc, as these MMORPGs came out mainly because they had PvP in them. We stayed away from EverQuest because we thought it was a lame carebear game. Those games were my first nights I ever stayed up for over 48 hours straight hardcoring when my parents left for small 2 day trips on weekends. I began to understand how sleep affects the mind for the first time. I began to teach myself to balance my life after I saw how bad it was effecting my life in high school.
I didn't take driving lessons until I was 18. Just to show you another small detail on what being a hardcore gamer means about your life. You might wonder why I turned to this life as it seems worse than the life I had. Nope. I just stuck to learning in high school. Why? My best friend moved away when I went to Junior High. That's why. Friends in high school also went to different schools. My real life was depressing. So I turned to my good online friends in internet gaming who were already there for me.
After I graduated high school, I took a summer off just to play games. I still take vacations just to game.
I was taking classes at my local college when World of Warcraft came out. At this point I was already a seasoned MMORPG veteran. I casualled WoW. I prioritized my college classes first. I got A's every semester. One time I screwed up and failed my Calculus 2 class but turned it around into an A ASAP after. It wasn't because of gaming, though, it was because I was getting tired of school and I got burned out.
I graduate next year with a Bachelor's in Computer Science. I still game. I will game till I die. I balance my gaming. When I have a lot of free time I hardcore a night or two. But most of the time I casually play. I have never committed to raiding in World of Warcraft. If I did, I would probably have to drop out of college from being out of balance. Designers who say they don't make games that take too much time anymore are correct when it comes to making a game where you need to commit that much time to play. However, where they are wrong is you can still make games that are long, but you don't have to commit to playing it. This is where I think Guild Wars 2 bases its design on by removing endgame organized raiding.
In the future, when I have a job, I probably won't have any time to play games at all hardly. I'll have to turn to games that focus on 10 minute to 30 minute game sessions or games that have save/load features. This is why I look forward to Guild Wars 2 or other MMORPGs that don't have raiding. It's why I'm pissed that Dark Age of Camelot added organized raiding with Trials of Atlantis because I could just login or logout at any time I wanted before they did for the most part.
But that's me. Your story may be very different. But now you should see why hardcore and casual is entirely personal and varies.
One of my other online friends who I spent a lot of time with had survived from a broken neck in a 4-wheeler accident. That was their reason for playing so many games with me online.
Thank you for your story Plasmicredx, that was an excellent read!
I enjoyed every word.
Congrats on graduation! 1 week ago today I graduated with my bachelors in Psychology.
The ideal game supports all playstyles.
It gives pure PvE players safe havens to calmly level by themselves.
It gives PvP fans areas where they get a bit better ressource per time ratios, but are in constant danger of PvP.
It gives casual gamers smaller goals they can archieve fast, or work easily upon by just logging some quarter hours per day.
It gives the hardcore player complex dungeons that require good strategy and high concentration over hours to solve them.
I guess I fall into the Casual PvE of yours, but what I really am is:
I'm a socializer the most, I enjoy hanging out with people, diving into the lore and the world of the game. I love to be a part of the game world, the lives, the events. I'm a RP'er, the kind that always gets the short stick in games, that always end up having to go to the cash shop in F2P games because anything else sold would disrupt the prechious PvE players and the adored royal PvP players... Yet, I love hanging with people, doing my role to right wrong(or make wrong?) in the world the devs built.
I'm an explorer second, enjoying to step off the beaten track, and just head towards the horizon, where something might have caught my eye, like a odd rock formation or a building that looked neat, or maybe it was a forrest? Or even maybe I just closed my eyes, turned around and just picked a direction to go on random?
I'm an achiever, sometimes finding some enjoyment in getting the nice loots that I can display, or hunt down this foul beast before anyone else does. But... I mostly have better things to do.
I'm a PvP almost never, as I've seen the PvP crowd grow more and more vile, into a crowd I barely want to hang around, or even be in the same zipcode as. I don't min/macx, I don't look for loopholes or ways to make an equal fight unequal... in my favor.
I don't bring 10 friends to a 3 vs 3 PvP challenge, to make sure that the PvP'er who actually brought only 2 friends gets his face full of tea. So... I don't PvP... There is no reason to. Even if I kill someone, he's just gonna get up and play along like he never died, probably including some cursewords, and accusations of cheating, and threats of how I'll get my derriere handed to me.
I really don't PvP, since the players themselves, really ruin my imersion... When did you see a royal knight or stormtrooper or a policeman jump on top of a corpse going "biatch, u such noob, my grandma could teabag you, LOL ROTFLMAO, n00b! j0 pwn3d! Go back to being a carebear!"... Well, I'd rather not see that...
So I keep my PvP in FPS and RTS games, and don't do it in my RPG's or MMORPG's.
And it puts all the RP stuff and customization extras in the cash shop, so those pesky RP'ers can pay for all the work the devs put into making those useless items.
:P
Hardcore PvE.
This is what I would do:
Server 1: PvE ONLY - Perhaps an optional arena with no rewards... just for when PvE'rs get bored.
Server 2: World PvP - A deep PvP system with MEANING:
I would have a fantasy game with multiple factions. There is no obvious good and evil, but several different kingdoms who fight over the resources of the ENTIRE world (much like our world today). Every chunk of land has a certain resource that can be controlled, e.g., crops, wood, fresh water, minerals, etc. The faction who builds the most castles, guild halls, and cities within a certain part of the land will have control over it. When the faction has control, all the monsters within that land will be aggro to everyone else...until another faction invades and destroys.
I don't know... something other than just mindless killed and ganking.
^ This. A developer wouldn't pretend this doesn't exist.
Hardcore casual. I like to just leave the world behind and let my imagination roam.