Green Monster Games (Curt Schilling)

[Draegan]

Originally Posted by OneofOne

If you want to make a great game you'd like to play, find out what is *fun* and *interesting* and everytime you consider, "How can I make this more accessable to your average player" hit yourself over the head with a baseball bat. WoW and EQ2 already exist, thanks.

Number #1 rule to making an MMO. Don't cater to the hardcore and the catasses.

Make the game fun to as many people as possible at the same time. I think what you suggest is the worst design philosophy ever. Then again if this is just a pet project for Curt (and I don't think it is) he can do this and the game won't make very much money or have very many players but he'll have fun playing it.

[Tyen]

Number #2 rule to making an MMO. Cater to Tyen so he can play~

[MrGraham]

The next game that comes out that caters to the "hardcore catasses" like EQ will get my subscription dollars.

[Draegan]

Thats a very small market to appeal too, doesn't make much business sense.

[MrGraham]

Does it make more sense to cater to 10% of the market that doesn't have anything catering to it, or 90% of the market that has 10 games already aimed at them?

[Twobit Whore]

That 10% of the market isn't all looking for the same thing though. Some want fantasy, some hate fantasy. Some want brutal PvP and some want no PvP. It's not as simple as 1) make game 2) ??? 3) profit!

[Draegan]

Originally Posted by MrGraham

Does it make more sense to cater to 10% of the market that doesn't have anything catering to it, or 90% of the market that has 10 games already aimed at them?

If you have a gamer pool of lets say 4,000,000 people (arbitrary number) would you want to make a game and appeal to 400,000 people or 3,600,000 people? You're not guaranteed 100% appeal to each group so if you're gonna hit or miss you might as well take a shot at the biggest group of people.

Plus the hardcore catass group of players are more fickle and annoying to keep interested in your game for a long period of time.

[MrGraham]

/shrug, that's your opinion but I'd disagree. Any game that caters to all carrot no stick casuals is going to be in direct competition with the juggernaut that is WoW and it's clones. You say the hardcore people are more fickle, but in my experience the ones that play all night are also the ones who will make up the most excuses about why they shouldn't quit for a new game.

Regardless, the next game that comes out that involves me being excited to get a phone call at 3AM to kill a mob is what I'm waiting for. More things to do at level cap when not raiding besides PVP or alts. Real character development, real guild development, etc. I don't even care about the setting.

And honestly I think the market would be better if games set themselves up to be niche games and planned accordingly.

2cp?

[Rezz]

Twobit, from earlier - There are "some" of those types of quests in WoW. Being that I've played half a dozen characters to max level, I'm pretty familiar with wow's quests. The -vast- majority of quests in WoW are 100% mindless kill quests with the sole intention of gaining xp and completely forgetable stories to go along with them. I'd say less than 10% of all quests in wow have any sort of "epic" culmination to them of any kind. Granted, that definition itself is up to debate, but WoW's quests that do what I describe are the exception, not the rule in that game. My point of contention was that those aren't really quests, they're quotas.

more up to speed with the topic, you can't make a game for the hardcore. It won't make money to a level that most developers want to aim for. And like it's been said previously, the hardcore audience is much more fragmented than the casual audience. Any attempt to focus on the hardcore will only get a few of the intended audience.

[Draegan]

As far as epic WOW quests. Do the attunement quests. If you ignore the PITA heroic and raid elements to them, they set a story up for you quite well.

[Dennadyne]

Why not find some middle ground?

I'd venture a guess that most of that 90% are all first timers that were introduced to MMO's w/ WoW, and they don't know anything but the easy button.

Develop both, start everyone out on easy mode and make the game more hardcore as the primary audience gets more experience.

How to do that is the real question.

[Draegan]

Well define hardcore. What elements make up this hardcore game of yours?

[Rezz]

Like I said, there are quests like that in WoW, just compared with the hundreds of task like deals, they are the exception, not the rule.

edit: I hate to use WoW as a model, but it's the current benchmark in mmos. Making the game "harder" at the top end when the majority of the focus of the game is not hard means people will get bored. Black Temple, for example, has some ridiculously small % of people compared to the entire wow raiding population that have set foot in it. But there are thousands upon thousands of people with pieces of equivalent gear from PVP. You -can- include both, but much like WoW's situation, you run into the point where the casual non-hardcore audience wants the same gear that the hardcore has. And since they provide the vast majority of the game's income, you end up catering to them whether you like it or not.

[Dennadyne]

Originally Posted by Draegan

Well define hardcore. What elements make up this hardcore game of yours?

EQ1 (this is where you say go play eq1)

[OneofOne]

Originally Posted by Dennadyne

I'd still prefer EQ's quest methodology. It's pathetic that spoilers aren't even necessary in new MMO's (other than raid strats).

This hadn't occured to me, but that's a very good point. Reminds me of the Simpson's WoW episode. Marge logs in and talks to the quest giver right in front of her. "Bring me the sacred blah blah stone. It's lost and very important!" Marge turns around and it's lying on the ground.

Why are these "quests" so apathetic?