WorldIV’s Tuebit posted a semi-rant about the lack of MMORPGs with casual-yet-deep gameplay. It all started in the Nerfbat Forums.
Psychochild brings up a good point about time contribution. Playing 5 hours/week will contribute less than playing 25 hours/week. This is true for most games on the market so far. If there were other ways to contribute other than beefing up your character so that he could do more damage to the raid boss, those 5 measly hours could be more valuable.
As Tuebit mentioned, a “sidekick” system could be used to temporarily increase the power of a lower-level player, allowing him to fight alongside the veteran players. The sidekick contributes to the group without being slaughtered in the first few encounters. This idea can be applied to group combat, but also to group crafting and resource collection. An apprentice learns faster from his master, and the master gains another hand to help finish the work faster. As the apprentice learns, he will be able to contribute more by making higher-level widgets that the master can use in the more complex object.
Since the advent of persistent online worlds, there has always been the question of “What does my character do when I’m not logged in?” There’s also been the question of “When does my character eat, drink, and sleep?” If characters got hungry, thirsty, or sleepy and the game required the player to manage those conditions either manually in-game or automatically by logging out, it could restore some of the balance. Virtually sleeping is not very entertaining, though. What about turning those into mini-games? You have a turkey leg (or some other food) in one hand, a mug of water in the other. Your goal is to eat and drink enough to satisfy yourself while maintaining your breathing pace and allowing yourself to chew and swallow your food. Okay, so maybe that would get very old very quickly.
What about having a dreamland? While your character is sleeping, his conscientiousness is adventuring in a completely different plane of existence. The two planes share some aspects, while other aspects are polar opposites. Or…what if sleep time meant that you took control of a creature somewhere else in the world? This is a bit like “monster play” in LotRO and could be a little like the Skeksis and Mystics in The Dark Crystal. The hardcore player could have two characters to nurture, providing different opportunities.
Those would offer more for hardcore players to do, allowing casual players to have more “waking” time of a single character. Sure, you play 25 hours/week, but 1 out of every 5 hours, your main character must be idle somehow.
Another way to allow different levels of contribution is to alter quest goals based on play style. The hardcore player could have goals that require a longer time commitment (fight your way through the 8-level dungeon and slay the boss), while the casual player could have goals that require a shorter time commitment (destroy the small camp over the next hill). The hardcore quests could also require larger groups, while the casual quests could be done solo. SWG allowed you to pick missions a short distance away with easier opponents for a smaller payout or missions longer away with more difficult opponents for a larger payout. The problem was that everyone had this choice, so hardcore players would just grind a larger number of smaller missions. By taking that option away based on play style, you alter the possible contribution. This isn’t to say that long quests couldn’t be broken into smaller sub-quests or that short quests couldn’t be linked together. Short quests could focus on the quality of the guild/village/kingdom, while long quests could focus on the quantity (expanding the size).
Talk is cheap, and I could probably go on forever with different ideas. Implementing them is another beast, altogether. Until developers start including casual gameplay elements, we may be stuck where we are.
