How to appeal to casual players and deter hardcore/competitive gamers?

I am just wondering if anyone has any thoughts on what appeals to casual gamers and at the same time what hardcore/competitive gamers can not stand? Even seemingly obvious answers are welcome, I'm looking to explore this angle further.

Further reading:

https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/rts-mechanics.275314/
https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/minimal-rts-game-design.332646/

 

Too much RNG and catch up mechanics.

It makes the game seemingly more fun (because wacky random things can happen!) and it also protects egos (since, you didn't lose because you're bad, but you lost because the game is random and fun), while catch up mechanics (boosting the one that is losing and handicapping the one that's winning) keep things uncertain until the very end of the game.

Both those things, also discourage anyone from being "serious"(hardcore/competitive) about the game.

 

I agree with @AcidArrow, though I'd argue that even in a game for serious gamers, the outcome should be uncertain until the very end of the game, or close to it. You want to avoid a situation where the outcome is inevitable, but everybody has to go through the motions anyway. Risk is notorious for this.

Of course one traditional out is to have a tradition of simply resigning when this situation occurs. Both Chess and Go have this; games among serious players are pretty much never played to the end. In modern computer games, though, that's not generally done.

 

Although the popularity of competitive/professional card games (CCG's and poker) puts a dampener on RNG being an issue.

Competitive gaming is a scene, and whatever the scene says goes. Consider the insistence of final destination/no items in Smash. Is there any reason for this? Not really. It's just that competitive Smash plays by what the fighting game community says, and the fighting game community wants as close to symmetrical conditions as possible. There's no real reason why adding the random elements wouldn't feed back into play styles. If anything competitive players don't want to be perceived as lucky when the reality was they had better zone control.

 

Well... Hearthstone has a lot of more RNG than the average CCG and is decidedly more casual as a result. But it's still competitive, yeah.

But CCGs and Poker (and stuff like Bloodbowl) have RNG that is specific and known, you know (or you can make a pretty good guess) the odds before you make a decision, you can calculate them, you can assess the risk and decide if it's time to take it. The calculation/guesstimation of the odds and the risk assessment is the skill that players compete on.

Compare that to what Nintendo did to make Smash Bros Brawl more casual. They added tripping, which makes your character have 1% chance to trip and fall when you do *anything*. There is no risk assessment to make and there is nothing you can do about it, it's just something that sometimes happens.

 

In direct relation to rts/tbs? Generally these are what casual gamers enjoy, not related to rts or turn based competitive games.

mindless clicking
popping bubbles
matching candy rows
reward without effort
friends requests
facebook high score updates
anything social auto update form the game
walking
one handed play
ability to earn/update/progress without actually playing
finding hidden things in a maze of random things
low competition, easy effortless success
casual chat

mindless clicking
popping bubbles
matching candy rows
reward without effort
friends requests
facebook high score updates
anything social auto update form the game
walking
one handed play
ability to earn/update/progress without actually playing
low competition, easy effortless success

 

Make it look bright, colorful, and genuinely cute. Hide stats that feed into competitive thinking (win/lose kill/death ratios and the like).

And maybe this sparks some ideas:

 

Seems suitably horrific.

 

Very intriguing so far. I am starting to envision an angry 15 year old screaming obscenities about unfairness. Competition requires a level playing field, so you can accurately measure performance. Anything that may let the least skilled player win will be infuriating to them, but great for the casual player who is really just there for the experience.

nice.

 

This is hilarious, and revealing. I have had so much disappointment with SC2, and now I see it is the game itself that is to blame.

 

Totally agree that randomness is the biggest way to go casual for multiplayer. When the game result does not depend on the actual actions the players take, hard core players will be driven away and casual players will be attracted. Of course, you can also just kill the multiplayer aspect altogether, which will also appeal to casuals.

Casual is also encouraged by general dumbing down of the content. Make the game playable in small bites. Make the rules simple. Make the difficulty curve relatively easy.

Casual play is also encouraged by bonuses for just turning up. Check out most mobile games, playing once a day typically gives you more benefit then playing for many hours at once.

 

Randomness skews scoring, which is all competitives care about.

Online multiplayer is a tough promise to fulfill. You can build it, but will they come? (No. Not when they can play popular games.)

I like the idea of comeback mechanics, giving an advantage to the one who is behind.

Umm . . . like what?

 

It heavily depends on the kind of game. Mario Kart 8 gives you better items the further away from the 1st place you are. Other racing games make the one in the back go faster (look up rubber banding).

 

Or turn it cooperative? That way there's still a social aspect to the play, but not a combative one.

 

On the fence on this one. Coop games generally do reduce or eliminate competitiveness.

But on the other hand they don't necessarily encourage casualness. Coop games can be hardcore just as easily as they can be casual.

 

The idea in my head is exactly that rubber banding effect, but somehow using the power of imagination, placed seamlessly into the rules of the RTS game. Not making the player behind suddenly have much stronger guys or anything like that. But basically, making it so that having your numbers drastically reduced or suffering the loss of an expansion also has a potentially positive connotation to it.

The idea is probably really simple but it just hasn't popped into my head yet, and when it does, it'll be like . . . oh.

 

I don't think co-op or competitive online gameplay should be the focus of extremely small-time indie developers because an online game requires the formation of a community, which means updates, patches, maintenance, etc. which costs money, not to mention advertising to keep new blood coming in as people naturally quit.

Look at all the online games with dwindling or low populations made by serious AAA studios and it becomes clear that the late 90's/early 2000's model of "people will play anything with multiplayer in it" is pretty much dead and buried since everything has online multiplayer now.

 

Maybe have every unit and building need an upkeep of energy (or, whatever kind of resource fits the setting), so when you lose stuff, you suddenly have all this extra energy available, which you can spend to speed up what you're building.

(or maybe, Units can consume extra energy and become more powerful for a short time?)

Dunno, rough idea.

 

Just stumbled over this:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/286000/Tooth_and_Tail/

doesn't this tick a few of the boxes for a casual RTS?

 

Tax write off.

 

I knew there was a reason I was internally sneering when this game popped up on to the storefront!

 

I'm not sure that's even RTS.

 

If you want to reduce aggressive competitiveness, you usually have to reduce the game's impact when it comes to the competition. In that sense, I would say that a coop game could fit the bill and still keep it relatively more targeted to casual.

For example, racing games are the example of game where aggressive competitiveness is present, but not much within the gameplay itself. Unless you got a rampaging player who doesn't race at all, there are little chance that you will find someone who will be angry if you're bad at the game and 2 minutes behind in a racing game. Whenever the involved players all are at the same level of skill, it's still keep its competition level high regardless.

How could that be applied to a RTS is another story, but it is possible if you subtract the element from the racing game that makes it casual competitive. How do you determines the winner of a racing game? By the timer obviously. It doesn't have to be started at the same time either. Trackmania is one of such example of games where players can win or not the game and, in the end, the winner is the one who did it the fastest.
So, a timer can be simplified by simply calling it "a score".

An example of a RTS that could be fun for casual and only slightly interesting for hardcore (because it's not really possible to turn one completely off due to the nature of "competition"), would be to make the "winning" not that hard, but instead putting it so that every player has a common goal that doesn't requires each to hinder themselves in reaching the end.

For example, you could have a RTS where every player plays together and a common enemy is shared on the map. They all start at the same point and the winner is the one who succeed at reaching at goal first.

The goal could be something like reaching an area (like a obstacle race where the runner is the player's army and the obstacles are enemies on the road) or a destroying a target. In the case of a target, it could be that the one who deal the most damage to it win and then this player get the choice of assisting the other remaining players or to quit the match. If the player quit the match, the difficulty of the map is adjusted for fewer player and it restarts until there's only 1 player left which get the option to quit or stay (either way, that player get the last position).

This would requires that each player would get the matches results later even if they aren't in the match anymore.
An example of this "winning" concept exist with games like World of Tank and War Thunder where players join a match and, once shot down, they can quit the match and get a notice of who won later. If the one who "can quit" early is the winner, the competitiveness is more aimed toward finishing the map goal and not being in direct competition with the other players.

Rage quitter wouldn't really be a pain for the other players if the game adapts to the number of player in a match either.

For the sake of giving a more concrete example :

Let's say it's a game like Warcraft. 2D or 3D isn't important right now.
Each player select a Race. They can select the same or different races. No limitation here.
Each player starts at the bottom of the map.
They move out and start gathering resources. When one player get resources, all the player get it in their own pool.
Their goal is to pass a small maze on the top of the map and destroy an evil monster.
They all get the same stuff, but they got the choice when it come to what troops or building to craft.
They can tackle the maze alone or wait for the other players.
Once the evil monster is destroyed, the player who dealt the most damage to it wins. The winner decide if he stays to help (he already won) or quit.
If he quit, all the player are forced back to their base zone and the maze's monsters are back a bit weaker.
If he stays, all the player are forced back to their base zone and the maze's monster are all back anew.
Every time the Evil Monster is destroyed, it repeat the same process until either the last player quit or finish the map (be it alone or with the other people who already completed it with him).
Completing it award the player some experience or gold or both that allow him (or her) to unlock some stuff for the next game.

In this concept, winning, while possible, is not as important as simply reaching the goal. There is the possibility of competition where each player can compete at who win, but it stays "friendly" as nobody takes an advantage over the other with the exception of if a player doesn't craft anything and stay in his base. (There would be possible counter to this behavior, but as a behavior, it's part of what makes a game "a game" in the first place : Choices.)

 

The biggest differences between hardcore and casual gamers I think comes down:
- How responsible are you for the outcome?
- How severe are the outcomes? (Do you get a prize for losing?)
- How many numbers are there?

Games with a lot of numbers, severe outcomes, and a lot of agency are the most hard core games.

The most important thing though, I think, is how much are you rewarded for making any decision vs how much you're rewarded for making good decisions.

This isn't just about actual rewards, like loot or chests or currency.

Juice is also a kind of visual reward. "When I click this button - there are fireworks and fun sound effects" is a reward for the player clicking the button. If there are fireworks for clicking the button no matter what, then you're rewarding the player for playing, not for playing well.

All games benefit from some level of reward for basic interaction, but casual games much more so. The more hardcore the game, the more you want to focus the rewards around "good decisions" instead of just any decision.

 

It's also worth noting that a game can be both hardcore and casual, by focusing on different parts in different places.

Although most everyone would call Hearthstone a "casual" game, the real reward system (currency based rewards) are focused around winning and nothing else (or at least they were when the game launched).

In this way, almost every part of HS was casual, except for the parts that relied on you spending money to increase your win percentages. This was much closer to hardcore.

A hardcore monitezation strategy wrapped around casual mechanics.

 

Plus, it just looks cool.

 

Casual games normally have a very simple learning curve that doesn't punish you for making mistakes. The only way to go is up. It's very difficult to lose, it might just take a while longer if you're not as good.

Hardcore games are punishing and have more of a learning "wave". Normally you'll suck to begin with, but slowly you'll gain confidence and skill, feel powerful for a while, then another challenge is thrown at you that will knock you down and force you to learn new skills and practise more advanced techniques - i.e. going up through a ranking system

Casual gamers enjoy being able to pick up a game and know that they will certainly make progress.
Hardcore gamers expect constant challenge and reward for their own skill improving rather than just time invested.

It's like the problem with kids these days. Every kid is automatically a winner for participating (casual), whereas you use to have be good at something to win an award (competitive).

I can't imagine a casual multiplayer RTS, unless you team up against AI.

If it's singleplayer, obviously this can be handled with difficulty options.