[MUD-Dev] Acting casual about casual gamers

[John Buehler]

Brian Green wrote on Sunday, June 25, 2000 10:44 AM

>Today, let's consider the case of the casual gamer.

  I'm very pleased that you brought up this topic, as it's something
that I'm hounding the posting community about over on the various
Hero's Journey message boards.  I agree with the vast majority of
your post.

>Yet, I think that character persistence can be partially applied to ease
>the problem of the casual gamer.

  Your 'partial application' is essentially what I'm after.  I don't
know if you include the following, but I consider it an important
element to the 'partial': having the characters in the world at all
times.  This is for the purpose of continuity and community.  I can
find where interesting characters are even when they are not actively
being controlled by their players.  Further, basic interactions become
possible if the character is around somewhere.   I may be able to give
things to the character, or give it a message, etc.  Elsewhere, we
have discussed the possibility of communicating a log of events to
players via email.  This log could include a variety of things
witnessed by the character.

  While I believe that an absentee character (need a better term for
that) should be essentially immune to penalty, I do not believe that
it should be immune to interaction.  I believe that the character
should be able to be killed, but that the normal penalties for death
and loss of possessions and such should not be in place.  My model
for death involves the character dying and recovering in place.  No
zinging back to a start point, etc.  As a result, if I park my
character in the woods and a big old grizzly bear stumbles across
him, it may kill him.  When the player comes back to the game, he
will find his character either dead and ready to recover, or already
recovered, depending on what he told the game to do in case of
character death.  I believe that the game 'intelligence' should be
sufficient to have the character defend itself and generally stay
out of harm's way.

>Many people have suggested allowing
>characters to do typically repetitive activities (such as using trade
>skills) during offline times.

  I have a model for this as well, but I'd first like to state that
trade skills should not be repetitive in nature.  If you're going to
put something into the game, make sure it's entertaining.  Trade
skills need not mean clicking one's brains out in order to combine
ingredients to instantaneously generate manufactured goods.  There
can be as much activity in the microcosm of a forge as there is in
a combat situation.  It's all a matter of what the player is
interested in.  I'd like to see all areas of gameplay be rather
involved so that only players actually interested in those areas will
dive into them.  Or, that a new crop of casual gamers can come into
being BECAUSE non-combat activities are interesting and involved.  I
believe that at present we have games that are only games of combat
and magic.  As a result, those are the sorts of players that are
attracted.  If we dump combat and magic and only have a game world
with trade skills - with as much complexity and graphical treatment
as is found in combat and magic today - we'd attract a different
group entirely.  I wonder if they'd be as obsessive  :)

>Given this option, it becomes even more imperative that we discard the
>linear power curves currently found in most MUDs.  If advancement can
>happen when the player is logged off, it becomes meaningless.  The ideal
>tactic then becomes creating a character and waiting enough time before
>using it for it to have gained significant power.  We still want people
>to, you know, play our games, just not require it to the obsessive
>degree we have to today.  Alternate advancement mechanisms need to be
>explored.

  I'm not sure I understand your meaning here.  Are you suggesting
that we reign in the power advancement scheme or just permit people
to advance while offline?  I have a big problem with the 50:1 power
ratios that develop between new arrivals and old hands.  There is
simply NO reason to have such a huge power differential.  A newbie
should be just as capable of joining in on that dragon hunt as the
old hand.  Get 30 newbies with bows and they might very well put an
arrow into the dragon.  Get 30 master archers and they have a better
shot at it, so to speak, but not 50 times better.  And if a newbie
sticks a sword in a master anything, that's going to hurt just as
much as if a master anything does the same.  The whole notion of
increasing hit points is fairly ludicrous.

>The goal is to allow people to log on, enjoy the game, and leave knowing
>that they can log on sometime in the future and still enjoy the game as
>much as they did the last time, if not more.

  Agreed.  This may be considered axiomatic by all game designers,
but they also have the implicit assumption that players enjoy the
game for rather long periods of time.

>How do we do this?  We need fix the glaring problems with advancement. 
>Abandoning the useless linear power curve that defines advancement-based
>gameplay is the first step.  We need to develop a replacement advancment
>system that does not reward obsessive play.

  Woohoo!  Okay, everyone repeat after Brian...

  You made other comments about community and the need to use
communication.  I have a belief that if there are well-established
community areas, there won't be as much need for cell phones in
the virtual world.  For example, if there are 'front lines' for
all the combatants, then folks will know where to find their friends.
The existence of teleportation in a world exists in opposition to
community.  It says that I can be anywhere in the world.  Yet my
friends cannot see me and cannot rely on any spatial detection
mechanism.  I could be anywhere in the world, producing a needle-
in-a-haystack problem.  So I'd like to see less emphasis on solo
activity for things that don't naturally lend themselves to it, but
make sure that players aren't penalized for not being able to solo.

  For example, if I hop into the game and want to get into combat,
I don't go to one of the established areas where bad guys hang out
and hope to land some unaware solo monster.  I go to the front lines
of combat and join in there.  I help out whoever is there and they
help me out.  That's the way combat works.  Either you help and
get help or you don't succeed.  EVERYONE is faced with the same
challenge.  This is also tied up with the idea of levelling the
playing field, with newbies being able to do something useful right
off the bat and helping out with the established masters.  The
masters would rather have a guy watching their back in the chaos
of battle than not.

  Other activities that are more given to solo play in reality
would retain that trait in the game world.  Some trade skills
would be ideal candidates, but even trade skills can be done
better by having several people working together than alone.  So
that means more communities and more places that everyone knows
to go to.

  I think that explorers are the most likely candidates for
true solo play.  Solo explorers can wend their way through the
world and simply see what's out there.  I have hopes that there
are techniques yet to be discovered that will inhibit spoiler
sites and their ability to ruin the fun of the explorers out
there.

  Well, I'm going on and on, but I'm a big believer in making
the games work for casual players - because I want to play
casually.

JB




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