[MUD-Dev] Casual Crowd vs.Time Rich Crowd [was: Time Debt]

[Mike Rozak]

HRose wrote:

>  I have many design ideas on how to solve the problem about
>  "Casual Crowd vs.Time Rich Crowd" and they are along the lines of
>  creating different structures inside the game where different
>  players have different roles and goals. Where casual players have
>  a specific role and goal and where time rich crowds have
>  another. And the *key* is about giving them different roles but
>  making they play *together* with the same general goal.

Different roles could work, but what if a player's goals contradict
his allotted role in the world (as specified by the number of hours
he can play)?

Here's an idea that's won't work, but it may spawn some ideas that
will:

The basic problem with casual players is that if they want to be the
best at X (highest level, biggest overlord, etc.) they
can't. Period. They don't have the time to commit, and since MMORPGs
are more or less based on "more time played" => "more power". Causal
gamers have no hope.

One solution is to change the MMORPG to "better player skill" =>
"more power". This can be done by using player input more, and
character skills less. It can also be achieved with permadeath. Both
of these techniques have been discussed before.

Or, you can change "longer time that has been a member" => "more
power". Give a fixed amount of XP per day the player has been a
"member" of the world. Likewise, there are problems.

Another alternative (which probably won't work) is to have
"temporal" shards. Every day of the week is a different incarnation
of the world. Therefore, when a player creates a character, they
will need to elect what day-of-the-week they want to play. (They can
change the DOTW, but not so often that they can end up playing the
same character every day.) Likewise, the world's data will be stored
in 7 separate bins, a copy for each day of the week. This way,
casual gamers can arrange one day a week to play and have a much
better chance against full-time gamers. Full-timer gamers can still
play all week; they'll just need 7 different characters.

Of course, full-time gamers won't like this, so they'll leave the
game (or at least the shard that is temporally divided). Part time
players will only like this if they can regularly set aside a chunk
of one day to play, which isn't likely. Conversely, you could limit
the number of hours a player can play a specific character, but
allow them to play on any day; this has problems though because a
lot of players only playing a small amount of time per week destroys
any sense of community. Encouraging players to show up on the same
day each week at least fosters a community amogst the
Wednesday-crowd, etc.

And to generalize the rule...

Have you noticed how there are so many events in the olympics? The
100m race, 400m race, 1km race, 100m with one arm tied behind your
back, 400m without any shoes, 800m run backwards, etc. The more
events, the more winners. The more winners, the higher chance that
an athlete will get to be #1. The same design scheme undoubtedly
works in VWs... there's no reason that a VW can't have a multitude
of shards, each with slightly different rules (such as temporal
shards), and each tuned towards a specific demographic of player.

Instead of having a new player pick a shard at random, ask them some
questions, like: How many hours do you expect to play a week? Are
you single? Are you a teenager? Etc.Use these questions to direct
them to a shard that's tuned towards their needs. (Of course, some
people will lie to get to a shard where they think they can win,
which requires either some sort of offline verification OR a design
so that people that the shard is not targeted towards won't be
interested in it... as in the case of temporal division.)

To use an analogy...

Don't think of a VW dataset as a master dataset to be copied amongst
all shards. Use it as a template, with slight variations designed
into each shard, in the same way that Andy Warhol and other
screenprinters would use the same silk screens, but vary the colors.

Of course, many MMORPGs already do this, providing PvP shards and
non PvP shards. A similar approach might be able to solve the
"casual crowd vs. time-rich crowd" problem.

Mike Rozak
http://www.mxac.com.au
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