So this is a bit of a weird tangent, and I am not even certain where it is going to end up… but here we go. I’ve been seeing sentiments for years expressed each time a game fails or a game flounders and I think in large part they point at a larger misunderstanding by a segment of the gaming community. More recently this has been happening quite a bit in the New World community, where everyone can for the most part agree now that the game is failing or is in a failed state… but no one can agree as to why. I’ve seen lots of people point at the game’s failure because one of several reasons… here are some summary takes that I have read:
The game is failing because…
- it abandoned hardcore dark souls combat
- it did not focus solely on open-world PVP
- it did not focus solely on arena combat
- there isn’t enough endgame PVE content
There are of course other takes that I could include, but I am largely focusing on these four takes because I have seen them the most. My feeling is that New World is failing because it did not create an ecosystem that was friendly to casual players and did not give them a reason to stick around. It launched with a poor server design that had a cap of 1500 players, making it deeply difficult for people to get logged in and actually play on the same server as the rest of their early adopter friends.
They created a dungeon design system that made it difficult for players to group up and do things together and a questing system that literally made it impossible to help someone out with key gating quests after you had completed it yourself. Then when the most hardcore of players had “finished the game” by rushing ahead in the first day or two… a patch was released that moved the goal posts for more casual players to where they might never be able to accomplish the same things actively breaking some of the most casual friendly content in the game.
Basically, my takeaway as to why the game failed is that it did not respect its casual population. Please note I am not a casual gamer. I spend a truly stupid amount of time playing whatever game I happen to be hyper-fixated on. I am no longer full-on Hardcore, but I live in a comfortably Mediumcore existence where I cherry-pick the activities that I care enough about to actually focus and gear for. However, one thing I have noticed over the years, is that that games that ultimately thrive… are the games that respect the casual player base the most.
What I mean by this is these are the games that make it easy for you to drop in, play with your friends if you have them, or still get content done if you are a purely solo player. As much as the more serious gamers lament the existence of LFR in World of Warcraft, it allows players to see end-game stories without having to deal with the treadmill of endgame progression. Similarly, I think the big open-world boss battles in Guild Wars 2 are a testament to just how good a game can feel when it has respect for its casual player population.
The problem here however is that the Hardcores are always a vocal minority in any game that they are playing, and they are ultimately trying to skew things towards their own demographic. I specifically called out Guild Wars 2 because that game implemented a very casual unfriendly world game event in the Dragon’s End zone, that also gates access to one of the key features of the End of Dragons expansion. This has started discussions within that community, specifically among the content creators about how exactly they can make players hardcore like themselves, and take all of the endgame progression seriously. The thing is… this is not a battle that they can win and if the game clamps down to focus more on serious content… the player numbers that they rely on will dwindle.
I feel like we have been watching this play out without realizing it in World of Warcraft. That game starting with Burning Crusade has become more and more a game that slowly pushes you onto one of several endgame onramps. You currently have three competitive communities of Raiding, PVP, and Mythic progression. I think there is a large group of players who come in at an expansion launch, play through the story, level a few alts, and are not seen again until the launch of the next expansion. What is left outside of the three competitive communities, is largely unrewarding and repetitive world content. Guild Wars 2 has shined in this department in that there are multiple paths to the best stuff in the game, one of which is a very serious crafting process that requires no endgame participation in order to accomplish it, just copious hours of gathering or gold.
Honestly, Final Fantasy XIV has the same problem of players bouncing when they complete the story content. I am very much one of these people, in spite also having been someone effectively playing the game many times in the past when it was considered to be in a content lull. The difference with FFXIV though is that they have a large number of systems not tied to the core game that folks seem to enjoy engaging with. You have the minigame-laden gold saucer, housing extreme if you can luck into winning a plot, the deep dungeon systems, and even the “limited job” of Blue Mage which effectively is a spell collection minigame. Even though there are still players that come and go with the content tides, there is way more content to keep folks engaged that is not directly tied to the core pillars of dungeons, raids, and ultimate.
The most thriving game is ultimately the one that respects its casual players the most and makes them feel like a part of the larger community… without asking them to conform to some specific ideas. I think the thing that the Hardcore player base needs to understand, is that they are very much in the minority and that not everyone views the games that they play as a competition. Please for the love of god let the casual players just enjoy the game, and stop trying to change them. This “change” takes place in two ways, indirectly by appealing constantly to the devs to make mechanics more punishing and more tailored to your specific interests. The other key way that change is invoked in a community is by creating an atmosphere that is hostile or toxic to anyone who does not perform in a specific manner under specific conditions.
I remember reading a specific article back in the day as to the small portion of the player base that ever experienced Naxxramas in World of Warcraft. While I could not find the specific article as I was writing this, I did find a YouTuber that tried to do some math on the percentage of players that saw a full clear of Naxxramas before Burning Crusade. This YouTuber clocks it at 0.07% of the total player population had a verified clear of Naxxramas before the Burning Crusade pre-patch. While raiding is significantly more popular today than it was at the time… you are still talking about a very small segment of the total player base that plays the game seriously enough to clear end-game content. I am not saying that end game content does not have a place, but the players who are actively engaged in it… need to understand the perspective that even today they represent a small minority of the total player base.
The success of a game over the long term… is in large part about the retention of your casual players. So when I read comments that a game is failing because it was not “hardcore enough” in one area or another I struggle to take them seriously. I’ve yet to see a game survive solely on their most hardcore players. If I could change anything about the larger community discourse, it would be to show a little respect for the players who are just playing the game to have fun. Maybe stop shaming them for not turning in the DPS you are expecting, or not having the right gear. Maybe just let them play the damned game and do whatever it is that is bringing them joy. The more welcoming the game is to casuals… the more casuals will ultimately decide on their own that they want to get serious about the game. Broadening the player base will also by side effect broaden the pool of players that eventually trickle up into the more serious content.
So again when I hear about some game failing, my takeaway is generally going to be that they did not support the more casual gamers enough. A game.. especially one with social aspects to it… needs to be super easy to engage with. Possibly even more important however is that games need to allow you to engage with your friends instantly. Too many games are situations where you need to get to some arbitrary objective where the “real game” begins before you can actually play with those who were early adopters. As someone who is often one of those early adopters, please give me ways to take my friends along in the journey rather than having to come up with ways to gently pressure them into focusing on leveling to the point where I can actually start helping them. I want my friends to love the game as much as I do… so please make it easy to love.
Anyways I have rambled enough for one post, and I am not sure I have a succinct point to wrap up. Basically, respect the casual gamers out there, and stop trying to change them. Let them engage with games in whatever method they choose, and stop shaming them along the way.
There was a blog a decade(?!) or so ago called “Hardcore Casual” it might still be around. I would consider myself in that boat. While I tend to play a game religiously (GW2 for several years now), I don’t consider myself hardcore. I’ve never set foot in a fractal or a raid; and only done “casual” strikes, like the Frosty strike during Wintersday festivities and some story arcs. For only a few months of WotLK in 2010 was I ever in a raid guild, tackling ICC. Due to a variety of factors, some personal some raid group-related—I dropped out. However, I wouldn’t consider the Dragon’s End meta particularly hardcore. Certainly no more than Dragon’s Stand in the heart of Maguuma. Is it because of the low success rate?
I figure most people will eventually run it just to see. That’s the beauty of the open world metas in GW2. They are open to anyone without much need for organization (though coordination helps). No one is excluded or included because of their build or playstyle. As you have pointed out, the game is casual friendly almost to an extreme. And I think ANet is consciously guiding it to be.
In general though, I totally agree with your premise. While the specifics vary greatly, the success or failure of a game ultimately rests on how well it appeals to the basic, casual player; not the hardcore, theory-crafting, raid/PvP fanatic content creator. (cf. Wildstar)
I think New World is one of the most casual-friendly mmorpgs out there. Providing you mean true casuals, that is, not the kind who would like to be hardcore but just don’t want to put in the time or effort. A true casual, for example, taking the GW2 Dragon’s End event, for example, will either never make it far enough into the game to encounter it in the first place or, if they do, care enough about any of the details to see it as anything more than either a jolly romp or something that doesn’t concern them.
True casuals can play New World with considerable enjoyment just by wandering around, doing the quests, gathering, crafting, opening travel points, raising rep, buying and decorating houses and training the weapons skills. That’s enough to keep a true casual logging in for years because they’ll only play a handful of hours a week and not every week at that. GW2 is indeed the perfect casual mmorpg because you can play it for years and never feel the need to put in any more time and effort than seems appropriate. We had a friend who played only on Sunday mornings and only for a couple of hours. He played for about six years before he drifted away. It took him most of that time to get a character to 80 and he only ever played one character. He’d be very happy with New World. It would keep him occupied for several years at least.