Joseph Ridgeson
WarRavens
D.E.F.I.A.N.C.E
4
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Posted - 2015.06.30 02:18:00 -
[1] - Quote
Oceltot Mortalis wrote:I may not be an expert gamer, but from what I know of PVP games, is that they are not casual if they ONLY include online multiplayer. .
Hearthstone is a pretty casual game despite only being PvP only (aside from the PvE that you do once). The game basically has a few brackets for "it matters to be competitive."
1. People that get to rank 20 every month. This basically means "do you play the game?" because Rank 20 can be done in like 10 minutes.
2. Can you get to Legendary Rank at least once? There is a chasm between 1 and 2.
3. Can you consistently get High Legend, like top 20 (qualifies for Blizzcon Tournaments). There is also a chasm between 2 and 3.
Beyond that, you just play the game for fun.
Titanfall was pretty casual-friendly from when I played it. It didn't matter win or lose, you just shot the bad guys. There was the elements of the guys that could do insanely good things over the "I got a gun and I shoot you!" people but on average you never felt like you were just getting your ass murdered with no reprieve.
So from my experience, I disagree with your premise.
Keeping people playing is not exactly "making them feel like a bad ass." Some games do cater to that, Call of Duty's endless score points from doing things for instance. "You killed two people in a row", "you got revenge on that guy that killed you at the start of the match", "you died 15 times is a row but killed someone now, +200", not saying it as a negative just stating that is how the game operates. Others don't. League of Legends doesn't do this. Even with the co-op v AI game, it is mostly meant as a "this is the map, this is a lane" kind of stuff.
What Hearthstone and LoL do have in common, however, is that there is a natural barrier between people of different skill levels for the most part. A rank 10 is not going to be facing against a Rank 20 Legend in Ranked Mode in Hearthstone and a level 15 Summoner isn't going to be thrown against Cloud 9, for the most part. It certainly does happen at the start of a new season but it normalizes fairly fast.
Why can't DUST keep new players? Because the game is not good enough to slog through the crap that a new player is expected to go through. I started playing 6 weeks after the game went open beta and the last wipe happened. I was against people that might have been in Advanced suits with basic equipment. The forums went nuts when the first person announced they had Prototype Caldari Assault and pretty much nothing else. There wasn't much of a gear difference. Now? The new players is being put against players who have more knowledge about the game and have been playing longer (skill) and have two to four times the HP and 1.5-2 times the damage (skill points).
So they get their asses kicked. What do they see when playing, while getting their asses kicked?
1. Glitches.
2. Low Framerates.
3. Lag that comes out of nowhere.
4. A game that their friends probably don't play.
5. Very limited game modes.
6. Seeing the same people over and over.
7. The mentality that "the game is dead" because "there are only 2,500 people playing at peak." It is a hard thing to overcome that thinking. I remember playing Loadout for a few hours, having a lot of fun so I was thinking about throwing some money into the game. I looked at Steam and saw that the peak player in the last week was 700. "This game is dead" and pretty much all interest went away.
8. "So it is going to take me weeks and weeks to be able to not suck?" That is a hard thing to accept while you are getting your ass kicked.
9. The game is on a system that is officially obsolete. This wasn't as much of a problem is 2013 with the PS4 just released. In 2014, that fact was a larger problem. Now, with Sony potentially ending their support for the console in the next year or two, "why bother to stick around on a sinking ship?"
EVE has that same "Welcome to New Eden" way of thinking but new people do get into the game. Why? Because the game is aesthetically pretty, it has a large player base, it does things differently compared to other games of the same genre, and EVE is a larger game than it really is, IE it is a social Facebook game that happens to have spaceships (again, no insult; the 'real game' in EVE is no way the mechanics within the game). In short, EVE is a good game that is just as much of a "we are going to kick you in the balls!" type of thing as DUST but if you slog through that "here comes the nut kicking!" you get something out of it.
DUST isn't good enough to accept that your jewels are going to be a little bruised.
If EVE is Day Z, DUST is War Z / Infestation: Survivor Stories. There is some fun to be had in DUST but it is easier to accept hoops you will be jumping through in a good game rather than a mediocre game.
That is why it is mostly veterans that stick around rather than the genuine influx of new players, imo.
"This is B.S! This is B.S! I paid money! Cash money, dollars money, cash money!"
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