Trying to lure SO into coop gaming.

[Kageru]

Greetings,

I've been playing MMORPG's for years, but generally the bigger names. I've known there is a mass of smaller/fringe/asian titles like Ragnarok, Runescape and a great number of other strange titles with incomprehensible web pages but I've never really explored the space.

Suddenly I do have a temptation based on a couple of factors. The person in question is:

• Intense about games... but only puzzle type games with lots of color, sound, motion and relatively instant gratification.
• Is likely to be a very casual, so a low / no subscription fee would be good.
• Is highly unlikely to be into PvP. but quite likely to be put off a game by being ganked. So PvE will be the focus.
• Only has a non-gaming laptop... otherwise it would probably be WoW for the smoothest new user experience.
• It doesn't have to be a MMORPG, but the range of PC games that have co-operative gameplay are slim.

I've read up a little, and there's a lot of games out there... many of which are free but all of which seem to have substantial limitations as games. For example Ragnarok online is bright and cheery which is good, but gameplay looks pretty tedious and it seems they're asking for a pretty substantial subscription fee for a rather crude game. I don't mind paying, I can afford it, but it doesn't seem like that great value. At the same time there's an insane amount of free servers which I imagine are an incomplete implementation and have insane experience rates (3000%? how tedious must the regular game be if that makes sense.)

Does anyone have any thoughts on titles worth exploring that meet the above?

[Trippy]

Puzzle Pirates would qualify except for possibly the PvP part (there may be ways to avoiding it completely).

[Salamok]

Starcraft

[Numtini]

Puzzle Pirates! Even the PVP is fun! It's just a different color pirate in the same games--no badmouthing and such really. And the "dubloon" servers use micropayments, but ones that don't affect gameplay.

[Signe]

If you haven't played Puzzle Pirates! you really should give it a go.  It's VERY distracting without being time consuming and a lot of fun.  And CUTE!

[tmp]

Puzzle Pirates is good option. I'd add Audition ( http://audition.nexon.net/ ) as another... it can be bloody addictive, lot of moving colourful stuff, easy to get into, single game round lasts just few minutes so very casual friendly, and can play it either alone, or together with someone else either against other pair of people, or together with them vs NPCs. No subscription fees either, unless they changed it for the US version.

[Kageru]

Puzzle pirates did occur to me... but that sounds more like me being lured into her style of gaming. Also does it have coop content? Will look into it though.

I've seen clients for things like Flyff, Dream of Mirror online... I just wish some of these companies would spend a little bit of time on setting out their web-pages so they actually had some information on them.

(edit)

wow... just look at them all http://www.onrpg.com/boards/907.html

[Numtini]

I'm not sure how much of a PC you need for Flyff. I think its cash shop and otherwise free to play?

Maplestory is pretty weird, but I'm sure it'll run on some low end stuff.

[Kageru]

It's quite an interesting adventure.

I played through the first 9 levels of ragnarok online. I found the billing page and they want US 10$ a month for some pretty crude graphics and interface. The impressive thing was the first job quest (acolyte) told me to find father Burfwurflshasti who is north east. This turned out to be 3 long, mazelike maps while my character abilities still consist of a "noobie" skill that does nothing. It doesn't matter too much though as I kept getting cleaned up by a small butterfly called a "creamy" which happily hit me for 256 hit points while I had reached the impressive total of 100. Eventually, after sneaking through the first map, I got killed at the zone in off the second by an impressive collection of angry flowers. Back to the city center and that's enough for me. I can't easily imagine trying to lure some into MMORPG's with this.

I played through the first 11 levels on maplestory. It's certainly colorful, free, the mobs drop collectables for that instant gratification buzz and it does run on low end hardware. I'm not entirely sure of the cooperative elements in it, since the 2D space limits that and the abilities are pretty much centered on the player. I suspect, like diablo, you'd basically end up soloing on the same screen.

However the most limiting factor looks like it's going to be something systemic I should have seen coming. Since these games don't have the budget of the top MMORPG's I suspect they make up for it with a unrelieved grind that would make a vanguard player turn green. The amount of money and xp needed for upgrades in maplestory, and the sheer lack of any variety in the gameplay, pretty much seems to make it a game for the near terminally bored. No wonder they have issues with botting. Even more scary is it looks like there are quite a few of these people... although in both games most of the online players where trying to vendor no doubt insanely rare drops.

Flyff = bored people, PK and heavy death penalties for being PK'd..... hm, I think not. Though it does seem from the forums they're rolling that back and making most of the servers PvE.

[Numtini]

If the computer was higher end I'd say Sword of the New World. You could see if it can manage.

[Furiously]

Toontown for the gateway drug.

[Venkman]

Based on the puzzler thing, not having Xbox 360 for XBLA, and the lack of need for a persistent world but with some level of co-op or competitive play, I'd rfecommend going a different way. Maybe something like Pogo.com instead? They offer the usual round of download try/buy games, but the good stuff is online Flash/browser-based. They've got the XBLA-like achievements and micro-economy, customized avatars, yadda yadda. Lotsa games, so there'll be many hit or miss ones.

Certainly not an MMO, but like XBLA, has enough tools and features to be something of a "massive" experience anyway

[BigBlack]

Puzzle Pirates is literally the perfect choice for you guys.  By your question of whether or not it had co-op, it sounds like you haven't tried it out - you really should!  You simply won't find anything out there that's a greater amalgamation of your tastes and hers. :)

[Kageru]

I'll certainly be trying puzzle pirates and granado espada. I've also located a copy of the aging, but hopefully still classic, system shock 2 which supports co-op play through the main storyline.
 

[Trippy]

Granado Espanda is not a puzzle-type game and its a graphics intensive game. It is free to play, however, so you can see if it'll work on the laptop.

[Hoax]

It also sort of sucks, don't forget that part.

[schild]

It also sort of sucks, don't forget that part.

People who aren't knowledgeable about games tend to play games that "suck."

Hell, look at the Wii.

Too easy.

[Tebonas]

In other news I got hold of the security camera footage from the incident when a Nintendo console beat up poor little Schild. Finally I understand, I would have gotten a childhood trauma as well!

[schild]

Jesus christ. I wonder if he also has a cake.

[bhodi]

Jesus christ. I wonder if he also has a cake.

I think that, while funny, it's also obscure enough to give people a link to understand.

[Mrbloodworth]

Not to pimp the game or anything, but i recently got my girl to play LOTRO with me.. She was into zelda, Mario and other "actiony, arcady" games. But she is enjoying LOTRO. I even made an alt just to play with her =)

Jesus christ. I wonder if he also has a cake.

The Martha stewart wii cake?