| akilah |
Good day,
My question is simple: in the opinions of the experienced players, is there a niche in this MMORPG for the casual PvE player? To define terms, "casual" should be taken to mean "playing an average of ~2 hours/week", and a game would be considered to have a "niche" for the casual player if, with only that investment of time and some creative thinking from the player, the player can feel that he or she is genuinely contributing to world development, with a wide range of options in the content that he or she chooses to explore at any level.
I shall provide two examples. I state at the outset that the following statements represent my opinions only and are not to be construed as being worthy of discussion. I provide them only to give readers a sense of the play that I am seeking.
I considered Guild Wars 1 to have a good niche for the casual player. We were able, from the time of the betas to EotN, to maintain a ~2 hr average of play each week, create a wide variety of characters with an amazing variety of builds, always sign off feeling that we had made "progress", and eventually complete all the content several times over (different team compositions were of great interest to us).
To provide a counter-example, we do not consider Guild Wars 2 to have a good niche for the casual player. It has too high a level of "grind", too many restrictions, and all the "world changing" material seems to happen either without player input or in a way that requires high-level characters with plenty of time on their hands to contribute. It doesn't help that the group size has been limited to 5 when we have forged groups of 8 people that wish to play together, but that is a side issue.
Having perused this far, you understand that I am simply wondering if the Pathfinder MMORPG, as it appears now, seems to have a niche for the casual player. I fully understand that the game is changing and evolving, and that if enough individuals of like mind join, there is a reasonable chance that we could influence the final state of the game, etc. I'm just asking for the opinions of current players as to the current state of the game and any conclusions that said players feel comfortable drawing on the basis of "official" announcements/discussions/FAQs/etc.
Thanks for listening!