Discussion Friday: Hardcore vs. Casual in EQ

More than anything, I'd like this blog to become a place for discussion more than pure author exposition. I recognize that a blog, perhaps, isn't the best place for this, but neither is a forum, really. Perhaps one day someone will develop a web medium whereby the opening poster can set the discussion in motion, and it'll flow fluidly instead of a straight line of responses down the page. In any case, I digress.

It is my hope that I will manage to come up with a discussion topic at least once a week, so without further adieu I'll present the first subject on which I've got a lot to say, and I hope you will as well:

Hardcore vs. Casual in itself can be quite a large discussion, so I've tried to confine it to this particular game. I hope to have a chance to discuss it as it applies to the industry as a whole at a later time, but for now this is quite topical as the talk on the EverQuest forums has once again become heated over this particular subject.

In short, EverQuest's newest expansion, Underfoot, is quite a large step-up in difficulty over the last expansion, Secrets of Faydwer. Mobs respawn quicker, in general, they hit harder and have more HP.

My personal playstyle is spotty. Some days, I am definitely a hardcore EQ player, pursuing my goals for hours and hours (or, if time allows, days) on end. Other days, I'm more interested in casually achieving a few things in an hour or two of quick play. What makes the MMO medium so great is that it supports this through a breadth of content. At the risk of running into a cliche, compare EverQuest to a more linear game like Halo, or indeed one with scaling like Oblivion. In either of those games, if you're high-level and want to fight pathetic enemies for a casual good time, you have to start anew, with a new character (although doing this in Halo is pretty meaningless, due to a lack of character progression). In EverQuest you simply go back to where the weak things are and kill them. This issue arises, however, when new content is released. Should it be hardcore content, or casual content? In a perfect world, I believe new content would be continually produced for everyone, but at a different rate. I see something fundamentally wrong with equally splitting development time between casual and hardcore content when casual content is made, by default, by aging hardcore content. For my personal view, I believe SoD was a bit on the easy side, and Underfoot is a refreshing challenge, *but the easy SoD content is still there for anyone who wants to do it*.

The issue is that people view EQ as simply "the latest expansion", and not "the game as a whole". If I want to kill trivial content with my eyes closed (and I do enjoy that, often), I go to easy_content_land (my poison of choice is RSS). If I want to be up against content that will really make me pull out all my tools and face it at near-100 %, I'll go to the latest expansion, wherever that may be. You can't can't work that in reverse. Old content doesn't suddenly become challenging, but new content does become less and less challenging as time goes on (due to new expansions upping the ante for progression, and slowly trivializing the old game in an attempt to make you seem new and shiny and strong). The zero-sum effect of increasing PC power at the same rate as increasing mob power is another discussion topic by itself, of course.

This all traces back to everyone wanting to have a reason to purchase the expansion. However, I don't think what is best for the game during this expansion cycle was to make an all-encompassing for-everyone expansion.

Now, several times during this debate I've made the point that the opposition wants "carbon copies of content (namely, SoD content) that is already there". This is a strawman. In truth, this is a delusion on my part because I don't want to come out and say what I actually think the people campaigning for easier Underfoot content want. Namely, they want less difficulty, but they want the loot to remain the same. They want a loot pinata with little risk, as much of SoD was. This formula works great for Diablo and its ARPG ilk, but I believe much of EQ's fun has always been from overcoming challenges, as opposed to simply looting the next shiniest thing. A shift from progression/challenge-based fun to loot-based fun for EQ is not a good direction, and is part of the reason gear as-of-late has become so much less interesting. I see Underfoot as an attempt, both on the player and developer side (because, make no mistake, players guide development too), to make content that is satisfying to beat not just because you got a +9 Longsword of Winsauce, but because for a moment there you didn't think you could win.

These kind of debates are always ready to open old wounds and rehash the age-old casual vs. hardcore questions. A particularly well-discussed point of contention, especially as it pertains to EQ, is whether raiders (people who adventure in two or more groups of 6), by their very nature, deserve better equipment than players who adventure in a group of 6 or less. For full disclosure, I'm almost entirely a group player, and oftentimes a solo player. In these discussions, however, I often find myself siding with the raiders, but not for the reasons many of them profess. The idea that raiders are somehow more skillful, or that they put in more hours for their equipment, is a dead end. Skill, effort, and the grind are universal to both the group and raid game. No, what really makes raiders "deserve" better equipment is simple: they face bigger challenges. To make a boss monster difficult for 2+ groups, it (usually, barring unique design) has to hit harder than a mob tuned for 1 group. This means the tank needs better armor to take those hits. It is a factual point based on simple tuning. Once that is established, though, there is plenty of wiggle room. Many have proposed that raid-geared characters are "nerfed down" to group-level gear in group content. Honestly, barring the massive logistical troubles of implementing a system like this, it isn't a terrible idea. The main problem I'd have with it is that going backwards on progression in any kind of character-building game is simply unfun.

Another oft-mentioned point is that raiders get too much development time devoted to their particular subsection of the population. I don't believe this one either, simply because most expansions are vastly vastly weighted towards the group side. For every raid designed, there are usually four or five group missions, not to mention all the static group zones.

But I'm not posting to hear people agree with me, what do you think?