Casual Game Play

[MarshallDFX]

Public sparring areas
-LoD

I dig this idea alot.  It also has the added benefit of providing a whole new way (well, sort of)  to murder somebody without being nailed by crimecode.  And everybody could see you do it.

[SMuz]

Sorry, didn't read the whole thread, but just offering my opinions as a casual player.

Skill advancement is really the least of my worries. Hell, if my character improves by say... 1 point per day, and I play only one hour a day, he pretty much gets to 100 points in 100 days. But since he doesn't play often, doesn't explore the world and such, he doesn't die by 100 days. Other people logging on every day, probably get like 100 points in 20 days, but die within 30 days. So, in essence, I still get a lot of advancement with the character, and it's sort of funny when he pops up from nowhere and beats several cocky newbies in a fight.


What sucks:
- It's difficult to get along with others. Nobody sees you often, nobody remembers you, and people generally avoid relying on a casual player.
- Not easy to log off! The "play as a ranger" advice only works if I want to play as a ranger! Sandstorms make logging off annoying, and while there are quit zones, I don't want to memorize where they are. Heck, if I'm playing casually, I'm not going to "quit test" every room just to find them. I'm in the game to enjoy getting in-character, and looking for quit zones does not help.
- RPIs. It's incredibly rare to find one that lasts for less than an hour. I don't want to tell my wife that "I can't pick you up from work today, honey, because my character's in the middle of a mission and will get ganked by the sorcerer and his pet undead bahamet if I disconnect within 3 hours". I can't disappear just like that either, because the group hired/trained me for the past few RL weeks and both staff and players need the character there.
- Impossible to have plans and stories that rely on others. I can make friends that will defend me with their life. I can make enemies who promise to kill me the next time they see me. I could find out some super secret thing and rush to tell my boss. But playing off-peak, I don't bump into people often, and the next time I hear about them, they're already dead. That's just incredibly frustrating.
- OOC tendencies (log on/off times) make it easier to recognize the player. And as they live a lot longer, new characters might know a lot about me, because their previous characters interacted with me. It's not a serious deal, but it's quite annoying.

[Xagon]

I just have a few observations:
When you say "quit zone", what exactly do you mean? Quit-rooms appear quite readily on my screen, right next to the exits from the room. As far as ranger-quit, cities are pretty obvious, compared to the wilderness.

As far as knowing old PC's with new ones, I'll admit: I do it, but only if the PC is notable. Every so often, I'll bring up an RPT in the past because it was conceivable that my current character would have attended it. I predict that at least one of my future characters will have "attended" the opening of the Tuluki arena, if only to initiate a conversation.

To actually contribute to this thread, I think that casual players should pick a role better suited for their time. If you're a warrior/whatever begging for PC contact, play a mercenary, or someone who independently hires their skills. A merchant? Buy a few nice items from one city, then set up shop in another. Your mystique as a "traveling merchant" will actually be aided by your unavailability.

[Northlander]

The tavern quit rooms are reasonably easily-found within cities, and rarely beyond two or so minutes of spam-walking. However, when I'm pressed for time I might firstly only have some fifteen minutes to spend in-game; might secondly not know precisely when I'm going to need to leave right away; and might thirdly not feel too keen to look a spam-walking fool. Having all rooms be quit rooms would help my casual play.

[SMuz]

I'm really not fond of the "role better suited to my time" thing. In that sense, skill advancement is a bitch. It's difficult to survive outside a clan. It's difficult to stay active in a clan when logging in 60 minutes a week. A few clans suck utterly for playing casually because they have some pure RP routine that takes forces a RL time and they discourage logging off during these routines. Log off after the end of every sparring session and I look like a twink.

And yeah, the quit rooms are everywhere, but they're far away. The walking delay is a bitch, especially when you have to cross 14 rooms to get into a bar. Sometimes I want to log off now. Sometimes I just want a casual game I could play for 10 mins and get back to work later... not spend 5 mins walking to the bar, finding nobody there and another 5 minutes walking back. It's not easy outdoors either, because some creature's out there to kill you. I know where the cities are but my stamina means I'd have to wait for 5-15 RL minutes to get there and another few minutes to get into a quit room!

It's just too much of a hassle to play the game casually. I suppose the biggest problem is that a lot of stuff in Arm cost RL time. Healing, walking, etc, can cost huge swathes of time  


(BTW, I like the idea of travelling merchant or mercenary, though )

[ibusoe]

One of the threads in Player Announcements recently touched upon the desire of a few veteran players, not currently playing a character, lamenting the fact that the achieving success and having fun, admittedly by their personal definitions of those terms, cannot realistically accomplished in current design of Armageddon.  The argument appears to be that the current design mandates a time commitment to maintain relationships, develop skills, and further plot lines that becomes prohibitive for the casual gamer.

I like this thread.  I'm definitely experiencing this problem. 

It's intimidating to me to log into my char and know that if I take a month off, when I log back in everyone I know is dead.

The people who have replaced them will all treat my (year-old) character as a noob.

This makes it hard for me to play these days.  Very daunting barrier-to-entry.

[LoD]

It's intimidating to me to log into my char and know that if I take a month off, when I log back in everyone I know is dead.

The people who have replaced them will all treat my (year-old) character as a noob.

This makes it hard for me to play these days.  Very daunting barrier-to-entry.

Some of this can be helped, but some cannot.  The nature of the game will find a great many people dead every week, and especially every month, and there's really no way for you to avoid the feelings you associate with that fact.

However, you could consider roles that are not so dependent upon other players and social networking:

> Pursue a personal goal that encourages player interaction, but doesn't require sustained, or even repeated, contact with them.

Loremaster/Storyteller - You could easily spend time simply speaking with all of these new faces, asking for their accounts of major events or accumulating rumors, learning about aspects of the game ICly, and then choose to relay those "stories" as a performance to a tavern full of wide-eyed new faces.

> Choose a character that specializes in working with "newer" characters.

Middleman Merchant - One of my favorite things to do as a merchant was to hang around in commonly visited shops (i.e. weapons and armor) and offer to get players a better price on their wares for a small cut of the savings.  This doesn't really require you to be in a sustained relationship in order to interact frequently with people and gain in skill simultaneously.

City Escort - Take it either way -- as a piece of arm candy practiced in the finer arts of conversation, or as a burly warrior smelling of oiled carru leather, helping people maneuver through the city or even providing companionship may lead to some interesting scenes or events.

> Choose a character who's rarity is, perhaps, part of their charm or fun.

Annual Performer - Whether it be a musical or artistic rendition, your inability to log into the game on a daily basis may help bolster the reputation and the interest in seeing this certain character perform.  With a simple post upon the boards announcing your upcoming show, turn every play session into a mini-RPT and your name may actually circulate more readily than a character who has the time to play every day.

Those are just a few examples, but you get the idea.  There may be ways to develop a character concept where you achievements and fame aren't linked to the consistency of your play-times, but more to the content and rarity of your appearances.  This may or may not help your immediate situation, but perhaps it would help with future concepts or ideas?

-LoD

[Is Friday]

The people who have replaced them will all treat my (year-old) character as a noob.

You should never have this problem if you've developed your character to have a "strong personality". New characters are notorious for having weak interactions, so if you have a strong impression then people treat you as a valued RP commodity, I've found.

It's unfortunate that this is the case, but you need to engage players to have them see you as a worthwhile expenditure of their time.

My longest lived character was 12d playing time, I think... 3 RL months' time. (I had a lot of free time, okay?) You could say I'm a newbie character veteran.

[MarshallDFX]

The people who have replaced them will all treat my (year-old) character as a noob.

New characters are notorious for having weak interactions, so if you have a strong impression then people treat you as a valued RP commodity, I've found.

It's true.

[Linedel]

delurk.

I only read the first and last pages.

The time commitment issue is one of the major reasons I haven't played Armageddon in the last N years.  It has nothing to do with skills, it has to do with time.  Of my last 2 characters, one was a merchant that... actually pissed me off greatly not due to skills, but due to _player_ culture an player expectations that the merchant interact with in-game skills a certain way, rather than have realistic conversations about $xyz that they wanted.  The other was a quite aged sorcerer that, considering the duration of his existence (and the percentage of stuff powerlevelly branched early) used maybe 3% of his skillset during the "successful" portion of his life.  That character could have been a fresh character as well, with minimal change to his interactions.

Anything I actually want to do in game I can do with a fresh character.

What I can't do is break down the _player_ culture that expects a certain time commitment.  I can't break the _player_ culture that bases interactions based on server side skill levels.  Occasionally you see in-game people recognize that a character is being played by a new player, and give them leniency and/or try to guide.  That's a good thing.  But once a player is vaguely competent, no leniency is given, and a character is expected to play his "coded" skills and skill levels.

This of course provides a conundrum.  A skill oriented character is easy... you could play that casual... but if I wanted to kill stuff, why would I play Armageddon?  A socially oriented character doesn't need skills, but does need the playing time to command the attention of the characters (s)he desires to socialize with.

I'm not really sure where I'm going with this.  I think it's a social problem more than a code problem, but don't really have a good answer.  Possibly some of it is due to the "harsh" aspect - if a character has to try hard to get their sustenance, they (people that don't know other ways) have to worry about "code" to survive, resulting in too much player worrying about "code".  There might also be an effect on players due to Armageddon and its community's focus on "the rules".  There is a lot of "don't do X" sorts of things, rather than a focus on getting players to think about the 5% of the time that it's actually ok to do X.   This also tends to generate rigid thinking that looks for an authority - and "the code" is a convenient final arbiter.  This leads to back to the "coded abilities define the player" mindset that seems to hit some portion of the playerbase.

I don't really know how to change it.  It's pretty entrenched at this point, with over a decade of play with the current style.  It's a problem, in my opinion, because like many other things, it takes time to train a person to understand that RPI games aren't about killing things, or raising skills, but about the shared storytelling experience.  By the time a player is well trained, many of them end up with commitments that don't allow the time required to do a good job of it.

I do think that the long standing "no IC info" policy isn't a good idea for long term growth of the game.  If "the story" were more public, it makes it easier for people with less time commitment to "be involved" in a tertiary way.  Obviously not everything should be (immediately) public, but the majority is probably kept more secret than it needs to be.  Instead, players should be trained to understand the difference between personal knowledge and character knowledge and play accordingly.   My f-up on that simulacrum event was due to not really understanding the game (yes, a year or two into playing, I still didn't really get it, due to the culture of the people that recruited me) - and at the time, there wasn't really any good explanation out there; it had to be picked up as you go.

I've been pondering setting up a game using a popular IP to draw people into the RPI genre with a somewhat more forgiving environment.. but, time availability owning me there, too, don't think it's going to happen.

relurk

(next remembering that Armageddon > all, and that I should check the board for no reason: months)

[jhunter]

Damn. I just lost a big post and I'm too tired to try and remember it all and retype it.


Very long story short. It really sucks to have no choice but to play flavor characters or not play at all. I've tried many and they do not keep my interest enough for me to waste what little time I have playing, messing around with them.
For reasons that I don't feel like going into detail typing out again, the coded aspects are every bit as important to playing a character for long term as the social ones. But, there has to be a balance between the two for it to work. I'm a person that cannot enjoy the game without both, (if I could, I would be playing a mush or be playing World of Warcraft, both of which do not satisfy me for the same reasons I'm having trouble with Arm now)in my brief amount of time that I have to play, I could make some things happen that would be entertaining for me and for those I get to interact with, if I didn't have to sacrifice one for the other or take so long in going about it that I lose interest before I ever get to that point. I personally find it much easier to create small plots (with some character types) when they have some sort of coded skills that apply to them staying alive to do so without soaking up all their time (logged in) to get there.
There has to be a way that this can be improved, both socially and codedly, to lessen this issue without making those who have all the playing time in the world feel somehow cheated.
All I know is, I personally wouldn't feel cheated whatsoever if the situation were reversed. I would feel rewarded that there would be more people sticking aorund (even in short spurts over a much longer period of time) than knowing that we were losing people due to the casual unfriendliness of the game as it currently works.

[My 2 sids]

It'd be nice if the doorman to many of the clans (or appropriate other npcs for those clans/groups w/o official compounds) worked as message boards.  That way a PC can "tell" them that the PC wants to speak with a recruiter.  Clan PCs with the ability to recruit would be able to read the message board and then be on the look out to hire.


I really like the idea of clan water holes actually able to self-fill. 



Honestly, I'd really like to be able to email the MUD with my play times and be told which clans are active for my times.

[John]

I read the first and last page (8 pages is a lot!)

What I would like to explore in this thread are ways that gap could be bridged, or at least shortened, so that casual players (~1 hour/day) would have a better chance of enjoying the game.

I don't think the problem is that it isn't possible to achieve success as a casual player. The problem is this game is so much fun that you can't play casually. You either play a lot, or you don't play at all. Trying to play only a little bit is doomed to failure. As you begin enjoying yourself you'll inevitably begin playing more and more.

IMO this isn't a problem that should be fixed

I started playing organised D&D games last year, which is the epitome of casual gaming and pretty much the anti-Armageddon. Here are the things I miss:
* Permadeath - at the end of every 4 hour game if you died somehow (the games are built to ensure you almost never die), you're magically brought back to life
* Everyone sucking when they start - In the latest version of D&D you're actually competent from level 1. You won't say "oh shit" at the mere sight of a single spider.
* Roleplaying - Its essentially a hack and slash game. Sure its called a ROLEPLAYING game, but it is nowhere near the level of Armageddon. EVERY character is skilled in combat. You can't play a merchant or a noble's aide
* In game actions have in game consequences - Certain platyers talk smack the instant they see a templar or nobleman! And the guidelines for running the game are such that the player isn't going to get killed or spend a month in jail!
* Fear and paranoia - People are so trusting in D&D. Largely because.....
* Being evil - in D&D they not only put labels such as "evil" and "good" onto actions, you're expected to play a non-evil character. So disatisfying.
* Roleplaying - Yeah I know have this twice, but a lot D&D doesn't have roleplaying, but rollplaying. You don't have to roleplay being diplomatic, or lying, or trying to determine whether or not someone is lying. You simply roll a dice and it does it all for you. *mumble mumble*
* Twinks and powergamers - The system not only allows people to twink out and powergame, it encourages them to *mumble mumble*

On the other hand, it does have some good points:
* Simple rules - A new version of D&D has been released and I often get into arguments over those who liked the older version better. I agree with those older players on every single point except for the complexity of the rules. I like the simple code Armageddon has (from an end-user point of view Armageddon's code is much simpler when compared with the old D&D rules ). It allows you to ignore the rules and just roleplay. They of course say you need complex rules in order to roleplay. Unfortunately none have decided to give Armageddon a try so I can't prove them wrong.
* Social life - I now have one! I haven't had a real social life since 2002, which is funnily enough the year I began playing Armageddon (although I don't actually blame Armageddon for that. I was dealing with a lot of issues back then and Armageddon was a good escape from it all).

Yeah, that's it. Only two advantages for all those disadvantages, and one of those advantages is simply something Armageddon shares. Although I do admit the other advantage is a pretty good one Also many of my negative comments are for the Organised games. Home games (games you make up yourself and play with close friends) are able to get around some of those points. Although it takes a fair bit of effort to get people outside of the "organised game" mindset and into a roleplaying mindset.

Oh, there was one more disadvantage I forgot to mention. The game is so tantalisingly familiar to me that it simply makes me miss Armageddon even more! For example I was writing an adventure for a local gaming group and I was told to make the location as harsh and terrible as possible. So I basically wrote a typical day in the city of Allanak with templars and commoners galore. There's a good chance I got a bit carried away and made it a bit too harsh (I was able to stop myself from including neckers and cannibalistic halflings. But I was so tempted), and I had SO much fun doing it that I had to pop in and check out the old place.

Of course, all of this is probably massively off-topic. But allow an old man to reminisce

> Pursue a personal goal that encourages player interaction, but doesn't require sustained, or even repeated, contact with them.

Loremaster/Storyteller - You could easily spend time simply speaking with all of these new faces, asking for their accounts of major events or accumulating rumors, learning about aspects of the game ICly, and then choose to relay those "stories" as a performance to a tavern full of wide-eyed new faces.

> Choose a character that specializes in working with "newer" characters.

Middleman Merchant - One of my favorite things to do as a merchant was to hang around in commonly visited shops (i.e. weapons and armor) and offer to get players a better price on their wares for a small cut of the savings.  This doesn't really require you to be in a sustained relationship in order to interact frequently with people and gain in skill simultaneously.

City Escort - Take it either way -- as a piece of arm candy practiced in the finer arts of conversation, or as a burly warrior smelling of oiled carru leather, helping people maneuver through the city or even providing companionship may lead to some interesting scenes or events.

> Choose a character who's rarity is, perhaps, part of their charm or fun.

Annual Performer - Whether it be a musical or artistic rendition, your inability to log into the game on a daily basis may help bolster the reputation and the interest in seeing this certain character perform.  With a simple post upon the boards announcing your upcoming show, turn every play session into a mini-RPT and your name may actually circulate more readily than a character who has the time to play every day.

Those are just a few examples, but you get the idea.  There may be ways to develop a character concept where you achievements and fame aren't linked to the consistency of your play-times, but more to the content and rarity of your appearances.  This may or may not help your immediate situation, but perhaps it would help with future concepts or ideas?

-LoD

These are all great suggestions. They don't address the Crackageddon factor. But they are still good

[Gimfalisette]

A simple coded change that would help casual players (and also marginally benefit players with much more time to play), would be to have all "power pools" slowly regenerate during logged-off time. The power pools (stamina, stun, and mana) exist primarily to limit how often skills can be used; and for the casual player, logging in after two RL days only to find that his/her power pools are just as drained as when logging off is quite a deterrent to play.

If power pools regenerated at a rate of, for example, five points per hour of real time logged off; then a casual player could log out at 30/100 stun, log back in 23 hours later, and find that stun was fully regenerated--and thus the casual player could immediately begin to attempt to find other PCs to communicate or play with. There would be almost no benefit to just logging off for a couple of hours, because power pools would not have regenerated far enough to accomplish much at all.

I probably wouldn't include the health pool in a change like this, though.

This is somewhat similar to the change to drunk code that was made at the beginning of the year. Because of that change, it's now much more possible to casually play a PC who gets drunk frequently, since drinking doesn't necessarily have to interfere with "getting stuff done" in game. (Before, attempting to play a lush on only 1 hour per day was maximally frustrating.)

I don't believe that spice effects were included in that change made to drunk code, but I don't see why they wouldn't wear off as well. That would have both advantages and disadvantages for PCs. For the casual player who wants to RP a spice fiend, it would make that role have more meaning--since every time they logged on, they would have to be looking for their fix. As it is, with spice effects not wearing off while logged out, there's much less urgency to finding a fix for a casual player.

[Lizzie]

I think that's a great contribution to the relief of the casual gamer's plight. I would extend it to include health, with specific criteria. For example - if you logged out below 50% of your max health, then logging in more than 5 RL hours later would bring you to 51% max health. Considering that 5 RL hours is approximately 5 game-days, that should be sufficient to allow you to roleplay your recovery, and still emphasize that you -need- to recover, still, without requiring you to immediately type "sleep" upon logging in.

I mean, even if you were "near death" when you had to log out to go on vacation, surely when you return a RL week later, you're either gonna be dead, or WELL on your way to recovery, if not fully recovered. I mean, that's a half-month, game time. Perhaps that could be added to the criteria so it'd be something like:

40-50% returns after 5 hours to 51%, after 24 hours to 60% (nothing better than that)
30-39% returns after 5 hours to 40%, after 24 hours to 51%, after 72 hours to 60%
20-29% returns after 5 hours to 30%, after 24 hours to 40%, after 72 hours to 50%
10-19% returns after 5 hours to 20%, after 24 hours to 30%, after 72 hours to 40%
Under 10% returns after 5 hours to 10% or +10, whichever is higher, after 24 hours to 20%, after 72 hours to 30%

[Gimfalisette]

Yeah, I'm not specifically opposed to having health regen during logged-out time, just there would need to be sensible parameters for it so that it doesn't get abused.

[Synthesis]

You can sleep for like 5 minutes and go from 1 hp to 100.  If you're a wiz with bandaging, you can go from 1 hp to 50 in the time it takes you to spit out an emote.  I really don't see how that's much of a deterrent to playing at all.

[Gimfalisette]

You can sleep for like 5 minutes and go from 1 hp to 100.  If you're a wiz with bandaging, you can go from 1 hp to 50 in the time it takes you to spit out an emote.  I really don't see how that's much of a deterrent to playing at all.

I was talking about power pools, not health regen. And, for a casual player, a place to sleep may either not be available, or it may just take too long to get to, in their available playtime.

[LoD]

Based on some of the ideas put forward in this thread, I made this suggestion in the Arm Reborn forum for a Quit Rest option.

-LoD

[Synthesis]

You can sleep for like 5 minutes and go from 1 hp to 100.  If you're a wiz with bandaging, you can go from 1 hp to 50 in the time it takes you to spit out an emote.  I really don't see how that's much of a deterrent to playing at all.

I was talking about power pools, not health regen. And, for a casual player, a place to sleep may either not be available, or it may just take too long to get to, in their available playtime.

Stamina stun and mana regenerate even faster than health...so...what's the problem?  This seems like a very trivial concern.

[Lizzie]

Mana only regens fast - depending on a few different things.  Depending on the same few different things, mana can regen gruelingly slowly as well. As in - it takes 15 RL minutes to regen just enough to cast at a low level. If you're just practicing, in a safe place, who cares. If you logged out doing something important or in a risky area it can be a big deal. If you're a casual player (which is the actual concern here - how to accommodate the casual player without pissing everyone else off) - then 15 minutes is a long time to be sitting there waiting to regen mana. It won't be a game-killer to allow for absences from the game by resetting certain "power tools" as Gimf puts it, to some amount higher than what they were when you logged out, if applicable.

[Synthesis]

Mana only regens fast - depending on a few different things.  Depending on the same few different things, mana can regen gruelingly slowly as well. As in - it takes 15 RL minutes to regen just enough to cast at a low level. If you're just practicing, in a safe place, who cares. If you logged out doing something important or in a risky area it can be a big deal. If you're a casual player (which is the actual concern here - how to accommodate the casual player without pissing everyone else off) - then 15 minutes is a long time to be sitting there waiting to regen mana. It won't be a game-killer to allow for absences from the game by resetting certain "power tools" as Gimf puts it, to some amount higher than what they were when you logged out, if applicable.

Won't somebody think of the 'gickers? 

[Gimfalisette]

I don't know much about mana regen, but I have found for some PCs that stamina and stun are slow to regen as well. It's pretty hampering to log in when you may have only half an hour to an hour to play, and have to sit around doing nothing for 10 to 20 minutes while waiting for whichever power pool you need to regen. It's a recipe for idling, rather than jumping right in and actually actively playing with whatever small amount of time you've got.

[Synthesis]

Eh, if you really only have 30 minutes to play, you're better off not logging in at all.  Otherwise you're just about guaranteed to run over that time limit, no matter what you're doing.

Beyond that, the only times I've ever seen stamina regen painfully slowly is in places where it's supposed to regen painfully slowly.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all in favor of doing stuff to help casual players.  I just think this particular idea is trivial.

[Gimfalisette]

Well, in an environment where things are currently tuned to actually work against casual players, even small changes could be helpful. I'd love to see big changes or system restructuring so that the game is enjoyable and playable for casual players; but that seems like hoping for too much.