Questions for casual players

Here we are, with a new mmorpg being developed. AoC promises to bring back risk vs reward, no p2w, massive world, plus many loved systems from previous games and new, unique designs, all created with the goodness of 2020 graphics and development capabilities.

But what is an mmorpg? It is a video game:

Massive multiplayer
A living, open world
Social based
Combat driven (Competitiveness)
Progress based (feeling of reward)

A lot of casuals have many concerns. I don't agree with them, even though right now I am a casual myself. I go to work, I have full on university and I am nearly 30, I try to stay healthy, I like getting out of the house plus I have people in my life I like to spend time with, and they don't necessarily play games.

Yet my concern is what will happen to this mmorpg, if we start chipping away at the above stated elements, like most mmorpgs have been doing in the recent years.

So In the following posts I will chip away one at a time the features with which people, not only casuals, seem to have an issue with.

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George_Black

Massive Multiplayer:

The size of the game map is big, and a lot of the world building, or taking on huge tasks, requires a fair bit amount of players, in order to complete them.

I am not sure how many servers per region will be, but IS has to cover:
NA
EU
Africa
LA
China
Russia
Sea
Oce

Some people, for example argue that there should be separate OCE server than SEA, for the benefit of 50 ping. I dont understand it, I play on EU servers from Sydney, but let's not go to extremeties.
This makes the communities smaller.

Now people start asking for PvP servers with less Corruption penalties.
PvE servers, in which pvp is optional or non existant
RP servers

Do you think that these are good ideas? To keep dividing the population
You won't find enough people in such servers to progress the nodes, or do any challenging content.
And then there are the costs to IS to maintain these low populated servers. That takes money and resources.

George_Black

A living open world.

Personally, the first open world game I remember was GTA 2. I am not into guns, I prefer medieval settings, but GTA 2 and then GTA 3 were so exiting to me, just because you could freely explore and do stuff in an open world.

Most games before that, were Stages. Take Crash Bandicoot, take any fps game, take Dynasty Warriors, take Tekken/MC. All the games were stages.

And here we have an mmorpg, a living open world game and people want to turn it into instanced stages to optionally play Co-op or VS (PvE dungeons/PvP BGs), in sterilised environments, in which your goal is to beat the stage, or beat the enemy team.
Zero surprises, zero stories, zero freedom.

I'd rather play FPS (even though I don't care much for shooting games) than waste my time on mmorpg BGs, when I can do open world PvP. Ye mb once in a while I might go for fun, but I don;'t want the population to go there to get rewards.

As for instanced dungeon runs, with fun challenging mechanics. Ye they are nice. I enjoyed them in Tera, eso, ffxiv.
I think they should be in AoC. But how do you prevent instanced dungeons from emptying the open living world?
Instanced dungeons shouldn't reward full loot items. They should reward crafting parts, for example parts for a sword. Then you'd need to go play the mmorpg elements, posted in the fist post, and craft your high tier sword.
You must definitely don't need lv10 lv20 lv30 dungeons, which you'd NEVER visit again once you hit higher levels. Or, in the case of ESO, once gear from a specific dungeon becomes underperforming, the developers need to create artificial reasons for players to visit that dungeon. Some people enjoy playing to achieve the highest score on a leader board, as opposed to fighting other players. Fair enough........

So yeah, mmorpgs lately are all about Co-op mode PvE and VS mode PvP in instances.
How is that good for AoC that wants to bring back the true open world feeling to the genre?

George_Black

Social based.

Let's remove open world PvP, add LFG for BGs and Dungeons.
Let's make open world content casual friendly so that players are "not forced" to group up or belong in a guild. That way they can easily complete the story quests and random quests that NPCs give them around various locations on the map.
Now let's make it so that everybody can be proficient in all crafts and self sustained.
Also let's add daily quests that players can complete to receive daily rewards.

Is this an mmorpg or a singleplayer rpg?

I don't understand why people want to play solo and then expect to achieve the same results as guilds or smaller groups of players.

Many people really seem to want to play with NPCs, instead of other players. Some seek to marry npcs, or add them (or pets) in their housing to make it look alive.
I am all for a lively homestead, but I play the game to interact and fight other players. If I didn't want to play with other players I'd go play a singleplayer rpg. They all offer many character customisation options, have better voice acting, better story and cool cutscenes.

Why do people want to turn a social game, into a solo game.
Don't you understand that if solo players request solo features, that everybody will switch to the solo features, since group play, organisation effort and challenge is optional?

Take ESO for example. A player can easily raise many alt chars, do they dailies with all of them, reap the rewards, craft every consumable or otherwise item. Zero need for cooperation except for farming a few times the Trials/Dungeons until you get the gear you need.
Do you know what happens in the open world bosses? Zerg and silence. Zero challenge.
Do you know what happens in the open world 'dungeons' ? Zerg and silence. Zero cooperation.
Do you know what happens in the 'open world PvP' zone (more like empty word...)? LFG, zerg and silence, and some groups switch between the 3 warring factions with alts, making the concept of alliance loyalty and victory meaningless.
Do you know what happens in PvE dungeons? LFG, speed run and silence. Farm achieved.

I played that game for 5 years. Never once did I felt the need to help somebody beat a mob in the open world, or asked someone to rescue me from a mob, never once did I felt the need to ask for somebody to craft me something (maybe once, because I didn't feel like buying a DLC just for an armor set). Never once did I need to belong to a guild to complete trials or win a PvP campaign.

Games like ESO and ffxiv are essentially single player RPGs with optional Co-op/VS modes. Totally optional. Zero need for guild/group gameplay.

George_Black

Combat driven

If mmorpgs didn't have any side activities or non combat content, they would be basically, just a massive boring battleground.
There are games that scratch that itch, which they are devoted to combat. FPS, MOBAS, fighting. They are good for short term validation and a sense of victory to the everyday gamer. They are also a career path for talented gamers, something that many people laughed at years ago, but now it has become a reality.
Personally I find it strange, but whatever generates money, pays as well.

But mmorps are more than combat. They are an adventure.

But here is when it gets too much. People have mad numerous suggestions for in depth minigames attached to every aspect imaginable in a fantasy medieval life.
From the standard crafting, to map crafting, fishing, hunting, growing/herding to the newly craze furniture and house decor, to outfit designing, to archaeology, to tavern activities (honestly just slap poker tables at the taverns, for ingame gold gambling and I am happy with that).

People seem to want to live a second life, and place all these other activities in the same complexity and time consuming level as combat, and I find this to be wrong for 3 reasons:

1) The more professions people want added, that can benefit a player with rewards or commerce, the less value the products have, and the more players will just compete for a lower price bunch of let's say x100 potions.

2) People ask for very niche activities, that require a lot of programming/art work, but will only be experienced by... themselves only really.

3) The more time you need to sink into doing those non combat activities, the more time you steal away from social gameplay.

Yes, these professions, activities are needed to distinguish the mmorpg genre from a Battle Royale, and to drive the economy together with loot, but it is silly to believe that there should be as many activities to match as many individual peoples imaginations. Take any medieval film/series.

How much screen time is developed into plot and character conversation (story), how much time is spend into sword fighting (combat) and how much time is spend to show what the peasants of the time were doing with their pigs, or clothing shops or cartography. Maybe a minute, like the reforging of Narsil, but no more than that.

George_Black

Progress based

Single player games used to have a character, you'd pick up some weapons or consumables, beat the stage, face the boss.

Then game along mmorpgs, with classes, gear, lv up, stats. Now every single game out there copies this model, yet some casual people seem to want to reach max lv as quickly as possible and head to the end game they saw in instanced dungeons/bgs mmorpgs.

What is the point of going so fast through the lv10 lv15 lv20 etc etc areas? Why are you in such a hurry to reach lv 50? You do realise that you won't get to experience all those times you were lv 20, just like you won't get to experience your childhood again ye?
And you do realise that an mmorpg like AoC won't spit new content like ESO does every 3 months ye?

In order for progress to feel rewarding, it takes time and commitment.

Take progress out and you take out the identity of the mmorpg. It becomes more like a BR or MOBA.

Progress is getting to experience your character, become good at it, understand it. Use it.
How many people get SMASHED in games like ESO and Tera online, as soon as the ez story mode is over and endgame begins. It's because they never played a real mmorpg, and the didn't understand how their class functions and how it behaves against different enemy classes or challenging PvE situations.

There used to be websites that would guide players through the growing phase of the mmorpg. Then those site creators decided to make build guilds or wealth guides or guesting guides.
I never understood people that wasted part of their 24h day to watch others play, instead of play their nice game. But then it hit me. They progressed so fast that they don't know WHAT they are doing.

Back in my L2 days, the only content creators I'd watch were music videos of sieges, open world clan wars and duels. Nobody cared to narrate "how to play the class/game".

But I guess since there is an entertainment demand, why not. But you know what? Don't spend hours watching others play the game, and then complain that AoC is too time consuming, seeking to make it a more casual game, just because you didn't treat it as a game, but rather as a task.
Go play a single rpg game, or go watch a "start to finish, no commentary" youtube video of that game.
AoC is here to bring back the quality in mmorpgs, alternatively, there are many casual friendly, PvE friendly, PvP friendly mmorpgs out there.

Very recently a player described in a "what about casuals" thread the ESO playstyle and how they wanted it implemented in AoC. So I asked a question along these lines "why don't you play ESO/ffxiv?", and the surprising answer I got was "never played those games"

Seriously...... you complain that AoC seems too hard, but you don't examine other games that might appeal to you, yet you proceed to try to shape another?

George_Black

And lastly, honestly, if you seek to make changes that help casual players in AoC, please tell me, what are competitive mmorpg players supposed to do in AoC? Because we have been waiting for a challenging mmorpg with no p2w for so long now.

This is my question.

Jagaro

I guess I'm casual so I'll say this:

Let's wait and see how Alpha 1 is first.

George_Black

Jagaro wrote: »

I guess I'm casual so I'll say this:

Let's wait and see how Alpha 1 is first.

and the sky is mostly blue during the day time.

Jagaro

George Black wrote: »

Jagaro wrote: »

I guess I'm casual so I'll say this:

Let's wait and see how Alpha 1 is first.

and the sky is mostly blue during the day time.

The great Garey Busey demands it to be so.

Warth

the problem aren't casuals though. The casuals don't care until the game is released.

It's the forced casuals, that can't play as much as they want, but want to progress just as much as people who are spending 3 times the amount of time ingame. These are the vocal minority.
10-20 hours a week isn't casual, its far more than 50 % of the playerbase of an average server will put into the game. It's not a problem to the grand concept of the game, that these wannabe casuals can't compete with the people playing 60 hours a week.

A true casual doesn't care about all the things the vocal minority wants to change. If the combat is good, the world beautiful and interesting content for them to do, then they are happy. They are the ones who will probably enjoy the ever changing world the most, as new content will open up all around them.

Journying through the world usually is just as enjoyable to them as doing the dungeon itself. The journey matters to them, not reaching the goal. Which is one of the main reasons why the summon system is non-sensical. The family summon system is designed to help the vocal minority. The problem is, that this system that's designed to help them will eventually just hurt them in the end as the people they want to "catch up" to will profit far more heavily from it/abuse it to widden the gap

Atiqa

Honestly I think it mostly comes down to people just not being able to adapt their views of an MMORPG to something new/different.

I do this myself at times, where I look at how X MMORPG does it, and how inconvenient it would feel if Y feature wasn't present.

They have played MMORPGs where you just fast travel around without any worries and just queue up for dungeons etc. wherever in the world. Then they try to imagine that exact same MMORPG, but without being able to fast travel or fly, and not being able to queue up for dungeons and whatnot.

That sounds like shit to me too, and of course it does, because those games were made (or adapted to over time) with that in mind, and it would just be tedious.

AoC on the other hand, is meant to be played in a completely different way. Just take fast travel for example. In FFXIV you have these hunts/enemies that pop up in areas around the world. If you weren't able to fast travel to that location when someone found it, that would be horrible. You would have to just run around in those meaningless areas hoping to be extremely lucky. But AoC is built around you not missing out even if you can't get to something in time, you just have to think smaller and focus on the area you're in at the time.

Or like the family summoning thing that's being discussed a lot now. If it takes everyone a long time to travel, your friends will take longer to get far away from you too. So if you just try to hold together somewhat (why wouldn't you), it shouldn't be such a big problem even without that summoning.

Lets just hope the team holds true to their vision and then people will eventually realize that they have been looking at it all wrong. Or the game just isn't for them, which is fine since all games can't cater to everyone.

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