I’ll take some time commenting other ideas and adding some new ones:
How about having different servers for people depending on the average amount of time they are willing to play the game. People that want to play more often would join the addicts' servers and those casual gamers could be on the noob servers.
In order to make things fair, put some sort of mechanism in place that if someone is playing the game too much on a noob server, they are told to join a veterans' server. If they don't comply, simply move them.
Not bad, provided that the reversed statement is not true. After all, if you, for RL reasons, have to pause your gaming for a while and get booted to n00b server, it’s no fun at all... and endless grind to keep up to ‘veteran’ standart is no fun too, I guess. Perhaps I just don’t like the company of abovementioned casual gamers?
First option is to fully define the character at character creation. This sounds drastic, but there are ways to balance it. You could for example make restrictions on the types of characters that you allow to do this with and it might only be allowed on casual gamers' servers.
Yea, that’s drastic indeed. And sets high requirement for things you can do with your stats maxed...
Btw! Why not make this possible for people who get some kind of ‘exclusive’ game bundle? After all, those casual gamers who don’t have much time on games because they are working usually have enough money - and, pretty much as noted, usually resort to buying the characters anyway.
“If you cannot stop it - join it!”
.
Of course, developing your char is a fun in itself, but if you don’t like it, but still want to have fun - why not? It’s a game, after all. The main thing is not to offend ‘usual people’ with that offer, cause some noobs with thick wallet getting at once what you have done for a few month... but this will happen anyway, like I said. And idea on ‘casual gamers server’ does sound good in that context.
Anyway, how about alternate solution I’ve proposed before, but it seems to be somehow neglected:
VR. I mean, full-scale VR, not just some ping-pong, but with different rules (but same engine).
I mean, that will allow players to experience what they will get by grinding without grinding - like high-level (don’t like levels, but it’s a very widespread term) PK, DM-interface (RTS-style) warfare, experience (and therefore, get ready to) all kinds of available quests, Tycoon - like economy simulator...
All this will look absolutely similar to ‘real’ world, but with no penalties for dying, instant skills, etc, etc.
So, the game can be made really realistic, harsh and challenging... like RL... but still be friendly to newbies and casuals, cause they’ll be able to experience it all in VR, and either get ready for it, or just simply live there, if they don’t feel like risking and/or grinding.
Of course, like I mentioned before, it will still be inferior to real status gained by training your character... but will provide a respite from the grinding, and allow casuals and crafting-oriented (or other pacifist types) to hop into action at once, w/o any risk of dying and loosing experience (only ingame money, perhaps) and having to grind for combat skills.
Also competition can be held, with prizes and stuff.
Btw, some games can be even in different setting - like fantasy one, or space simulator (think Jump to Lightspeed), etc - (can be brought in expansions by requests of players).
Of cource, it will not affect 'explorer' types, but they don't need grind to do so (usually, at least, or to much lesser degree), and the danger is part of the fun.
Btw, the reverse can be true.
You can try and set difficulty to "Insane" and try and survive massive assault by cyborgs all alone, attempt to capture/defend a city while massively outnumbered, etc - I mean such things that do not happen every day, but you want to experience them - after all, difficulty requirements are different for different people.
If you think that this ideas suck, you can at least say why so?
