Casuals vs. Bads: A Gaming Issue

[Paragon Fury]

So, this was brought to mind again by this article here:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/art...ing-To-Play-Fighting-Games-and-EVO-Rising-Thu

Its about how to make fighting games better for those who aren't very good at them. However, both in the article and the discussion afterwards the term "casual" seems to be getting used the wrong way and it seems to be causing some confusion over what some people are opposing.

This is true of many other games too - WoW, Halo, Call of Duty, Battlefield etc. What I, and I suspect many others when they use the word "casual" when they really mean "bad" is that we're getting tired of developers changing and developing games to cater to bad players. Not casual players, but people who are bad at the game(s).

The difference lies in this - "casual" is a measure of time, not ability. Casual players can still be pretty good; they just don't play a lot or need help finding other players. Bad players on the other hand, are increasingly getting catered to, and people who aren't bad and who like higher quality and competition in their games (like me) are getting kind of miffed.

Examples of games catering to bad players; WoW since the introduction of LFR (ironically, this could've been an awesome feature for casuals, but wound up being a place for bad kids), the entirety of Halo 4, 3D Spotting added into Battlefield starting in Bad Company 1 etc. These are all things that were added specifically to help bad players beat better[/]i players that they shouldn't have a chance against.

Or, in the case of fighting games; reducing a game to the simple inputs and not requiring combos without adding complexity somewhere else is dumbing down the game for bad players - adding a more in-depth tutorial and and guided matches helps the casual player learn (and helps the skilled player get better).

 

[BloatedGuppy]

"Bad" is relative. Everyone is "bad" to someone else.

Most games can and should be designed to cater to multiple tiers of skill. Multiplayer games almost always employ sorting to make sure you're playing against and with people of approximately similar ability, and in single player games it shouldn't matter a whit.

WoW players in particular chirping about "bads" and a loss of systemic complexity cracks me up, as WoW was the hand-holding Fisher Price barrier-to-entry lowerer that popularized a genre that was previously inhabited solely by grognards. It actually has a much higher skill cap than it used to. What's been lost is the sense of exclusivity.

A well designed game should have an incredibly low skill floor, and an incredibly high skill ceiling. WoW, for all its myriad failings, is actually an example of such a game. As are MOBAs. This is reflected in their massive popularity. Developers are certainly free to create games that appeal to extreme niches, requiring either excessive skill/patience or none at all, but they should expect to either capture small audiences or hold their audiences for very short periods of time.

 

[Aerosteam]

I get what you're saying except for this part:

Or, in the case of fighting games; reducing a game to the simple inputs and not requiring combos without adding complexity somewhere else is dumbing down the game for bad players - adding a more in-depth tutorial and and guided matches helps the casual player learn (and helps the skilled player get better).

The devs of Rising Thunder never dumbed down the game because right from the very start it was their intention to have it appeal to people who don't normally play fighting games and are scared away by how much they'd have to learn a lot of things to even be considered good.

 

[Phasmal]

Developers these days are going for the biggest audience they can get, and who can blame them?

And yes, that will include the filthy casuals.
I don't think it's a particularly bad thing.

I'm pretty good at games -if I do say so myself- and I think it's good that many don't have a huge barrier to entry. There are still ways to distinguish yourself as a really good player even in games like WoW that you may think have been tainted by catering to the `bads`.

And hey, we'll always have Dark Souls/Bloodborne.

"Bad" is relative. Everyone is "bad" to someone else.

Most games can and should be designed to cater to multiple tiers of skill. Multiplayer games almost always employ sorting to make sure you're playing against and with people of approximately similar ability, and in single player games it shouldn't matter a whit.

WoW players in particular chirping about "bads" and a loss of systemic complexity cracks me up, as WoW was the hand-holding Fisher Price barrier-to-entry lowerer that popularized a genre that was previously inhabited solely by grognards. It actually has a much higher skill cap than it used to. What's been lost is the sense of exclusivity.

A well designed game should have an incredibly low skill floor, and an incredibly high skill ceiling. WoW, for all its myriad failings, is actually an example of such a game. As are MOBAs. This is reflected in their massive popularity. Developers are certainly free to create games that appeal to extreme niches, requiring either excessive skill/patience or none at all, but they should expect to either capture small audiences or hold their audiences for very short periods of time.

Also yes, pretty much all of this.
I mean, I've been guilty myself of moaning that this or that game is too easy now, but really, you can prove yourself good by mastering them and if it's getting more people into games I really won't complain.

 

[Lufia Erim]

Well there are games that cater to everone.

Want an execution heavy game? Blazblue is there.

Want a combo heavy game with easy execution? UMVC3 says hi.

Want a timing heavy game? Have fun with those Street fighter 4 1 frame links.

Want a game based soley on spacing? DIVEKICK.

And so on. There are literally dozens of fighting games with active communities. Something for everyone if they are willing to learn. Problem is people want to plug in a controller and feel awsome.

 

[briankoontz]

The biggest threat and actual implementation that has made games easier is narrative. In narrative games the developer REQUIRES that players be able to progress through the game, to see all of the juicy plot that the developer is so proud of. This is game design that caters to bad players, it's why "narrative" is often a dirty word among "hardcore" gamers, and it's part of why Dark Souls is so beloved by these types of gamers, for presenting a very low-key (virtually no-key) narration. It's also a great deal of the attraction in games like System Shock, which presents it's narration as optional, so that both the hardcore and narrative gamer can appreciate the experience.

The problem in fighting games is not that they are difficult in general, but that the gameplay is extremely complex. There's a very high barrier to appreciating the game at a reasonable level. Some modern games, like Divekick, are very aware of this and try to cater to it.

What we may need is an expanded concept of game difficulty. Divekick was criticized by hardcore gamers for not being deep enough, not complex enough, so it was a "fun" game they played for a couple hours before getting back to their lifework at Ultra Street Fighter IV or Mortal Kombat X. What if there were two versions of Divekick - the base one that was already made and a "hardcore" one with expanded controls to appeal to serious fighting game players?

Game difficulties are typically trivial changes to easy quantitative measures - so the enemies get more or less health and do more or less damage. This is fine in games where the controls already appeal to everyone. But in fighting games it's the gameplay and controls themselves that are the barrier - so what if there was a simplified version of Ultra Street Fighter IV, with a less complex move set? Beginners could have fun and enjoy a basic experience, and then either leave it at that or "graduate" to the full version.

 

[Thunderous Cacophony]

Full confession: I'm a filthy casual. I've probably been playing games longer than some people on this forum have been alive, but it's a good week if I play for a couple hours, and I've gone months between finishing a game and picking up the next.

It seems that Rising Thunder is tailor-made for me: Someone who knows the basics of fighting games, but doesn't have the time or inclination to learn a very complicated and deep system. One button for one action makes sense to me, and it still allows better players to beat the tar out of me by knowing when to push any given button. In the same way I had fun with Divekick, because it had only two buttons but several different combos, and it was balanced enough that there was no real punishment for not spending hours with it.

I agree with Briankoontz that narrative design, when done poorly, can lead to poor game design that holds your hand and makes failure either impossible or meaningless, but I disagree that there needs to be two versions of any given game, one simple and one complex. If it's well-designed, either one will find it's audience, and we don't need to have everyone fighting over the exact same market with every title.

 

[CeeBod]

I get what you mean, but I've always prefered to use Noob vs Newbie as the distinction to use, rather than Casual vs Bad (Bad compared to what for one thing?)

A Newbie is lacking experience but is capable of learning and will therefore not always be a Newbie, but a Noob will always be a Noob because they are incapable of learning. Noobs are usually easy to spot because they insist that they're right and everyone else is wrong, and that any failure they experience as a result is always entirely the game designer's/their teammate's/anyone else but them's fault! Noobs outnumber pretty much every other demographic by a large margin on many online games!

 

[fix-the-spade]

Developers these days are going for the biggest audience they can get, and who can blame them?

And yes, that will include the filthy casuals.
I don't think it's a particularly bad thing.

The trouble is that it's an ass backwards way of doing things.

Games that bend over backwards to accessible to all more often than not fail to be engaging. Case in point, Counter Strike, Starcraft, League of Legends, World of Tanks and the like are anything but noob friendly, yet are the most played video games on the planet. To last games need to have a learning curve, they need to require more than a few hours worth of investment to master and they need that time to build the connection to players and communities.

 

[Something Amyss]

The problem is, as fighting games go, there seems to be quite a bit of overlap. There's a lot of crap to learn. Ittakes a fair amount of practice to get good, and often the only way to really do so is to get your ass kicked a few thousand times. I'm not saying there can't be prodigies or even that people can't get good overnight, but I think it's horribly unrealistic.

Fact is, I played fighting games up until about the time Street Fighter Alpha 2 or so came out. Probably a bit after, but in that ballpark. I really didn't touch a game until around Street Fighter IV. I went from being able to hold my own in tournaments to not being able to beat the story mode, because there was so much new stuff and I didn't really have the patience to learn. There's the possibility I could have been good again, but screw it. I had the same experience doing tutorials for a couple of the free fighting games that dropped on PS+. Eventually, I decided I wasn't going to waste my time learning this stuff and moved on.

But the point is more that the learning curve being what it is, fighting games tend to have an issue where dedication and time equals "good." Or at least, better. There's a strong overlap between "casual" and "bad." I am yet to have this problem with a multiplayer shooter, or even a strategy game. Yeah, I'll suck for a little while, but the curve isn't quite as sharp. Hell, I was playing Guitar Hero on expert faster than I was pulling new techniques off in SFIV. Not TTFAF expert, but still.

It actually has a much higher skill cap than it used to. What's been lost is the sense of exclusivity.

Wow, this really is the major theme of late.

I mean, you're right, I just didn't think about it in those terms.

Developers these days are going for the biggest audience they can get, and who can blame them?

And yes, that will include the filthy casuals.
I don't think it's a particularly bad thing.

Especially since we were probably all filthy casuals at some point.

I don't mean in the sense that we were bad at games. But people forget that Super Mario Bros didn't just start existing when speed/perfect runs became a thing. That there was a time when people were into these games in a more, well, casual sense. Mario was something my whole family could play. Even a lot of those "Nintendo Hard" games were, in the sense that there wasn't the same expectation that you necessarily had to beat the game or do X, Y or Z.

Odds are, none of us picked up a controller and was instantly hardcore. Few people get that devoted that fast. And that's okay.

Without those casuals, though, the genres we like will die off. With a sharp barrier to entry, we will not repopulate our genres.

And hey, we'll always have Dark Souls/Bloodborne.

Well, until they add that optional easy mode which will totally ruin the game for me because how can I possibly enjoy the game knowing other people are playing it wrong?

I mean, I've been guilty myself of moaning that this or that game is too easy now, but really, you can prove yourself good by mastering them and if it's getting more people into games I really won't complain.

Depends on what you're looking for, too. I've been playing Assassin's Creed Revelations and doing commentary over it. And not taking it to seriously, which actually gets me killed a few times. But anyway, it's kind of a treat. After worrying about pulling off the perfect heist or supporting my teammates in a shooter or whatever, it's actually nice and decompressing to be able to go into a game and not take it all super cereal. I mean, games are supposed to be fun, right? I do distinctly remember a time where that was the case.

 

[CaitSeith]

"Bad" is relative. Everyone is "bad" to someone else.

I agree with the first statement. When there is diversity of skill level in the game's community, an average will always appear. People with skills below that average are technically bad. If you can't determine that, if you can't separate the good the bad and the ugly ...I mean average, you can't make tier levels. And those tier levels have their own different averages (and hence their own good, bad and average players).

But, ugh! The "Everyone is 'bad' to someone else" part is totally false. In a group, there is always one person who is the best (who is bad to no one else in that game), and one who is the worst. No way around that. There is no "everybody is a winner" here.

 

[Silvanus]

"Bad" is relative. Everyone is "bad" to someone else.

Pfft. Speak for yourself, scrub.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

But, ugh! The "Everyone is 'bad' to someone else" part is totally false. In a group, there is always one person who is the best (who is bad to no one else in that game), and one who is the worst. No way around that. There is no "everybody is a winner" here.

Disagree.

At a very simple task, like...who has the quickest manual reflexes...I'm sure there is someone who is literally "the best" at a given moment in time. Good luck isolating them, or always encountering them in peak condition.

In game play, which is almost always multi-factoral, different people will have different skill sets, and shine more at different times. As Purge rightly points out in his lectures about gaining MMR in DOTA2, you might identify that a teammate is worse than you at...last hitting, say, or map awareness. But what you're not seeing/understanding is the ways in which they're better than you. The things they do well that maybe you're lacking in. It's a dynamic that often leads to five people sitting around in a team, all thinking they're the best player in the game and everyone else is stupid.

The best thing anyone can do is reflect on their own play, learn, and try and get better. The moment someone starts castigating other people for being "bads", they're just being a jackass. There really isn't any sugar-coating it.

Pfft. Speak for yourself, scrub.

I long ago accepted that I'm "bad" to everyone. =D

Wow, this really is the major theme of late.

I mean, you're right, I just didn't think about it in those terms.

I hadn't even thought about the broader issues of gate-keeping and exclusivity concerning the hobby as a whole. It's definitely an all-consuming theme in the MMO community, at least in the loot-level theme parks. Someone was recently triple-gilded on Reddit for saying it had been a mistake to move away from aggressively stratified player rewards, that the "jealousy of noobs" when you flashed your cat-assed bling in Ironforge was the driving factor behind the popularity of the game.

And I'm actually sure it is...for some people. But if you've observed the genre from the beginning, making things more accessible to a wide audience has...shockingly...pretty much universally resulted in boosted sales and a wider player base. Who would've thunk it? Wildstar tried to recapture the good old days of back-breaking attunements and "you must be this single to play this game" grinds, and it fell right onto its stupid cartoon ass.

TLDR MMO players are stupid. Never listen to them when they try and tell you what's good for the genre.

 

[CaitSeith]

But, ugh! The "Everyone is 'bad' to someone else" part is totally false. In a group, there is always one person who is the best (who is bad to no one else in that game), and one who is the worst. No way around that. There is no "everybody is a winner" here.

Disagree.

At a very simple task, like...who has the quickest manual reflexes...I'm sure there is someone who is literally "the best" at a given moment in time. Good luck isolating them, or always encountering them in peak condition.

In game play, which is almost always multi-factoral, different people will have different skill sets, and shine more at different times. As Purge rightly points out in his lectures about gaining MMR in DOTA2, you might identify that a teammate is worse than you at...last hitting, say, or map awareness. But what you're not seeing/understanding is the ways in which they're better than you. The things they do well that maybe you're lacking in. It's a dynamic that often leads to five people sitting around in a team, all thinking they're the best player in the game and everyone else is stupid.

The best thing anyone can do is reflect on their own play, learn, and try and get better. The moment someone starts castigating other people for being "bads", they're just being a jackass. There really isn't any sugar-coating it.

No one can be the best all the time, but there will always be a someone who is the "best" more often than the others (specially in competitive games like fighting games).

That's why in tournaments the best way to make the competition would be for the competitors to compete between them in a series of matches, and not just in one or two matches where you lose once and you're out. That's why going up the next tier level requires playing several matches.

Being able to be the best all the time is being perfect. But we aren't talking about perfection here. We are talking about having better or worse skills than the others.

Spoiler: It's like the 'outrunning the bear' joke. Someone perfect wouldn't have any issues outrunning the bear...

...but no one is perfect.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

No one can be the best all the time, but there will always be a someone who is the "best" more often than the others (specially in competitive games like fighting games).

Yes, there will always be someone who was "the best" for a small period of time, under a given set of circumstances.

I'm a big hockey fan. Teams have to go through a ridiculous war of attrition to get through an 82 game regular season and then a long playoff to determine who was "the best" that year. And at the end of the day so much of it is luck based it's ridiculous. Did you stay healthy? Did you get favorable match-ups? Did you get officials who called the game in a way that favored your team's style of play? Did you get the bounces? Did anyone get the flu? Etc, etc, etc. So yeah, someone is the "the best*", but that asterisk is always there for anyone who is willing to be rational about it.

The same is true for e-sports, particularly in games with shifting metas.

As I said, people would be well served by spending less time licking their e-peens in public view and making deterministic statements about their skill relative to others, and spending more time thinking about their skill relative to themselves, and how they can improve.

Or, you know. Having fun. That's a thing people can do with games and sports too. =D

 

[zerragonoss]

A well designed game should have an incredibly low skill floor, and an incredibly high skill ceiling. WoW, for all its myriad failings, is actually an example of such a game. As are MOBAs. This is reflected in their massive popularity. Developers are certainly free to create games that appeal to extreme niches, requiring either excessive skill/patience or none at all, but they should expect to either capture small audiences or hold their audiences for very short periods of time.

This pretty much covers my opion but I would like to add that I see a lot of people confusing this game is hard, and or complex, and this game forces me to waste a bunch of my time memorizing things or making small insignificant decisions. Memorizing things is not hard and it?s not good gameplay. Sometimes it is necessary to get a good mechanic to work, but more often than not if you ask yourself how much is lost if I simplify this the answer is not much to nothing except the illusion of complexity and choice.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

This pretty much covers my opion but I would like to add that I see a lot of people confusing this game is hard, and or complex, and this game forces me to waste a bunch of my time memorizing things or making small insignificant decisions. Memorizing things is not hard and it?s not good gameplay. Sometimes it is necessary to get a good mechanic to work, but more often than not if you ask yourself how much is lost if I simplify this the answer is not much to nothing except the illusion of complexity and choice.

Memory and iterative knowledge is a kind of skill, and it's a kind of skill a game can choose to exercise. For some people it will seem trivial, for others it will seem unsurpassable.

What constitutes "good gameplay" will vary wildly from person to person.

 

[CaitSeith]

No one can be the best all the time, but there will always be a someone who is the "best" more often than the others (specially in competitive games like fighting games).

Yes, there will always be someone who was "the best" for a small period of time, under a given set of circumstances.

I'm a big hockey fan. Teams have to go through a ridiculous war of attrition to get through an 82 game regular season and then a long playoff to determine who was "the best" that year. And at the end of the day so much of it is luck based it's ridiculous. Did you stay healthy? Did you get favorable match-ups? Did you get officials who called the game in a way that favored your team's style of play? Did you get the bounces? Did anyone get the flu? Etc, etc, etc. So yeah, someone is the "the best*", but that asterisk is always there for anyone who is willing to be rational about it.

The same is true for e-sports, particularly in games with shifting metas.

As I said, people would be well served by spending less time licking their e-peens in public view and making deterministic statements about their skill relative to others, and spending more time thinking about their skill relative to themselves, and how they can improve.

Or, you know. Having fun. That's a thing people can do with games and sports too. =D

Fun? In a professional tournament? No one has time for that luxury! XD

That's why I usually stay away from that and focus mainly in playing just for fun or single-player games. In reality my arguments were more of a knee-jerk reaction to the "everyone is a winner" attitude in a competitive environment like in all the games mentioned in the OP (except WoW, where PvP isn't the main focus).

 

[BloatedGuppy]

In reality my arguments were more of a knee-jerk reaction to the "everyone is a winner" attitude in a competitive environment like in all the games mentioned in the OP (except WoW, where PvP isn't the main focus).

Yeah I'm not arguing that "everyone is the best", I'm saying "the best" is ephemeral, and no one should get too full of themselves. Folks should be measuring themselves against their peers, not concerning themselves with what people far below their skill level are doing.

It would be like professional athletes showing up at a rec-league game and chortling about bads ruining the sport through their inept participation. And if professional sports culture represents something you're still aspiring to, you've got a lot of fucking work to do, gaming!

 

[Sarge034]

Do I think games are catering to "casual" players? Yes. Do I think games are catering to "bad" players? Yes. Are "casual" players all "bad" players? No. For the game in question it sounded like the target audience are folks who dislike fighting games, so theoretically higher tier players shouldn't be in that pool.

A well designed game should have an incredibly low skill floor, and an incredibly high skill ceiling. WoW, for all its myriad failings, is actually an example of such a game. As are MOBAs.

This made me laugh. I play lol casually (never do ranked, 5s every once in a while, and aram is ma baby.) but I'm a fairly good player (can beat upper golds most of the time). Because there is such a good division between skill tiers I'm stuck in ELO hell... XD I just don't play enough to be weighted as a "good" player.