Casual player experience and my feeling

[igodfather240]

Hello everyone!

Why do I write this?

Because lately I was feeling that as a casual player sometimes its being really hard to enjoy the game for me. And I wanted to talk about it, for maybe some help or better understand of how the game is working and why it is working like that.

Why do I feel like this?

As In the head line its written that I am a casual player, wich in my case means that I am a University student, who has to work to pay the rent, has a realathionship to maintain, love to work out and trying to be healthy with training, and stretching and eating healthier. But I have other 'quarter' time hobbies like reading, playing the guitar, traveling and trying to explore the World around as, being with my family.

Why did I write this in that depth?
Cause I wanted to present that I have a lot of things to do in my Daily life.

And, when Im playing a lot of the times I am feeling that its frustrating that I cant grow or improve my character in the game, coz in my casual life is not compatible with this game.
As I started to play the game my first intention was to get 'high' lvl to join into a guild which can provide a few good things to me. That part was really enjoyable and a fun experience.

But after that when you have to upgrade your eq and improve your char to be useful in the guild or be better at all. Started to mess the things up, I am buying rums in a really low level, coz without that would be impossible for me to even keep that level of playing. But I cant buy that much which I'd need to grow that fást when its start to be and enjoyable part again. I cant play a non supportive character coz eqing it would be 10x more money, which I cant afford, in the second parts of my busy weeks I cant even feed my pets coz my weeknd storage starts to run off.
So like that I cant be more useful in the guild life (mazes, etc.) then I wont get that many help or items or anything from them.
Getting money has a bit strict ways like manuing cooking farming a few things, but when you dont have much time its hard to compete with others whos are playing 2x more than you and the market is so big in those segments, that if you dont want to sell your things too long you have to lower the price which means that your effort worth less.

Without some money playing mazes and being active in a guild is really hard, coz youll need: ticks, voodos, cbs, amps, (if you want to do it in an effective way: pots).

These cost money again.
But how do you produce money, to feel a bit of improvement in any of these areas?
If you are lucky sometimes youll open nss, oss, jackpot machine, and get a good item from it, but its rare from a not big quantity.
And obviously its expected value is really really low.
Doing some quests doesnt feel helpful, maybe if a series of quest( not too easy to do, requires work) would provide a certain value to pve players. But seems to me that would be really hard to balance it. In general as I see 90% of quests are useless, we are just doing a few: RB, Hexa(not really one quest, event rather), LB, class advancements(obligatory), SQ(not worth so much), maybe swordman's life.

What can I do? Is it wrong that I feel like this? How to be casual friendly and provide a good balance between casual players, mallers, and hard cores?

I dont know, the answer for these questions. But maybe as a community with help from devs can figure it out. Or just help me to understand it better.

Last thing that came into my mind: I talked with a few players about that and they just advice me to: enjoy the game, take your time.


What gives me enjoyment is to explore this World, be part of events and mazes or higher lvl stuff(I've never had finished Rb in my life, and I played top2 already). But where is enjoyment when it start to feel like its cant reachable with my effort?

 

[Developer]

As I started to play the game my first intention was to get 'high' lvl to join into a guild which can provide a few good things to me. That part was really enjoyable and a fun experience.

This is the first, and biggest mistake.
Many High-Level guilds like to show off on the PK battles and to achieve that, they try to squeeze every bit of time and resource.
Ofc I do not talk about all of them. But most of the time the biggest guilds are like that.

The most simple solution is to just enjoy playing the game with friends and not rush anywhere.
Simply play for fun.

 

[igodfather240]

Ah, sorry but did you read my whole post?

Being an MMO player means that you want to achieve higher lvl, upgrade your equipment and experience some late game stuff in the long term, also in the process of that having fun (My intension is not to be the best Pvp player).

In my opinion the main things what that post trys to cover are that IMPROVEMENT is not casual player focused.
And thats because you are setting two basic ways to develop in the game: Playing and farming a lot to cover your expenses and have better eq(requires time as a resource) OR with mall(requires real money as a resource).
But also in the segment of these two things have players who have limited time and limited real money to be better.
I didnt write about malling at all, because I feel that is well balanced in a long term, means to me that it can be profitable for you and still not ruining the player experience.
BUT.
What I would wanted to emphasize is that I have issues with the time part of it. I feel frustrated coz it seems that Im doing something and not getting the same resource for it. Obviouly you can say that I dont want to grind why do I play mmos. But sorry thats not true, I want to grind and feel that its well balanced.
Game is so gold focused right now.
And I dont feel that farming the same spots as 100 more dudes and trying to sell my stuffs to maybe maintain my pet so the process can be continuous, works well.
Why?
I cant farm that much withy my limited time to deal with those players prices who can produce a mass and I dont see why is it good to be the 1200. man who farms oysters to sell fbs to make some money. And maybe we can discuss that what if after a 8 hour work day maybe with some training, travelling and house hold work(for example cooking) I dont want to farm one spot for hours, or if I have just one hour either I dont want to do that in it.

Lets simplify like you did.
I dont want to be the strongest player on the server, like this being in a guild means that you have to be a support or damage dealer who has not that big threat.

I would like to enjoy the process of grinding more. But like its discussed above the oportunity that I have (Quest, farming items, trying to be lucky, going into mazes) dont give much space to move, and sometimes feels depleting.

Can it be accapted that I feel like this? Or im seeing it totally wrong?

As a solution I would feel that doing a daily once doable quest maybe it requires around 1 hour of the day, can provide a not much of basic stuffs maybe ratz or a bit gold or exp, if everybody would have the chance to do it it wouldnt be a disadvantage to anyone.
It can change the pace of the game, so you can change what it gives or the quantity of it.
The game is a bit too 'lets see what that worths on the market' focused.
And my opinion is that quests can be a tone to that.Why quests are not worthy in the game?

 

[Dakiller]

@igodfather240
Hello mate, I understand what you are saying.
The problem here lies in the dynamic and competitiveness of the best guilds.
PKO is in itself a very grindy and time consuming game. Malling helps, but malling alone won't make you strong. The top tier players spend i'd say about 10 hs a day playing to stay on the top. Farming, lvling, pvping, cooking, etc.
If you want to be in the top tier guilds, you will have to be able to be useful for them, which seems a rather difficult task due to your schedule.
Your suggestion seems nice, but it's flawed:
* It would be easy to abuse (Abusers would make 100 chars and do the daily quests over and over again for profit)
* People with more time will be able to profit more than you from it, and you would become again -below average-
* It would change the core of PKO, which is: "To be good, you will have to work hard". Making the game easier for you, would make the game easier for everyone and it would change the whole concept of PKO.

My suggestion for you is to either step down from the top guilds and play at your own pace. That way you are not pressured into doing anything you are not enjoying.
On the other hand, you could decide to stop going for High Level (Where lvling takes tons and tons of hours), and focus on a lv 45 (FC) or lv 55 (DS) character. There is still enough competitivity there, and you could focus on equips, cooking, manu and pvp instead of grinding lvls as well.

Sadly, I don't see there is any other way for you to enjoy the game more due to your limited time to play.

About quests:
They are an important part but due to the grindy nature of PKO, not the core part of the game. You can also get Ref gems from some life quests if I'm not mistaken, but that's pretty much it.

 

[AlcoholicDanger]

I read it all. I don't have time to play game all time so I create char and go to ds. I understand that if u don't have time to play always you don't have what to search in dw or ca ( because there are so strong big lv chars, especially in CA). There is no way that you can be strong as them if you don't play always. I remember when I play top 2007 in pvp bar there was a lot of chars all kind of lv and they all pvp there. Since bar is death here ( and he would be ideal for you) you need to chose betwen fc or ds. Why I say this? There are strong chars at fc or ds but u can still pvp them especially if you can mall a little. Some of fc or ds chars are alts of players with bigger lv just they love to pvp in this mazes but still those chares are alts so you can battle with them ( because all their income goes more to main char).

I hope I helped ( sorry for my bad English)

 

[AlcoholicDanger]

I forget to tell. Fc and ds (as dw) opens every 3 hours so you don't need to play always. That is what I do. For example I play like moust 2 hours.

 

[Leba]

Well truth is that this game is a grind-heavy MMO and you won't get too much stuff done if you can't devote a fair bit of time to it.
But another trait this game has besides being grind-heavy is that it rewards consistency. In the long run, you'll eventually catch up enough to be relevant in High Level mazes and have a decent char. The only issue is, with such limited playtime, it's going to take awhile.

The two best things you can do are:
a) playing efficiently
b) finding something to keep you going

a) is pretty obvious. Try and find what best suits your playstyle and what helps you progress the fastest, preferably with a low burn-out factor. Plan your time, see what works best and keep it going.

b) might not be that obvious, so I'll elaborate a bit. We all play games to kill time and have some fun, in various ways and for various reasons - and this one's no exception. Find out what exactly is that main "fun" factor and what keeps you interested in the game; what's your goal, your purpose, your reason for having even started here and why you are still playing.
Focus on that, set some small milestones/goals, get involved with the community, try out new things, try and keep the game "fresh" (as fresh as this old game can get that is) and etc.
I know it sounds like turning a blind eye on some of the game's issues and that you're making the game better yourself, and only by your mentality - but isn't that the very reason you play the game and the very reason you're having fun? The game and its features can only help you and hold your hand to a certain level... but at some point, your mindset and imagination are what can provide you the most fun.

 

[Pluttarch]

Have the same problem like you. I wrote you a message. Probably we can help each other.