Player skill level classifications

People need to stop misusing the word casual it has no reference at all to a players skill or ability.

For example

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

HARDCORE: Can clear everything, progress through ultimate and one day will beat it if they don't burn out of the game. Pretty much a master level player. Raid leaders in general are this, hardcore spend significant time optimizing, leading, managing, and dealing with all aspects of the game.

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You can do all of these things (and even all the things listed on your lower tiers ie care about rotations and gear) but only play casually for a few hours on weekends.

Think about "Potd" / "Deep Dungeon".
That is a content that can be clarify as all 3 category you just mentioned depending on how you view on it.
I believe most players perceive it as a "long-term casual" content.

You can queue as 4 person and do 10 floors per session until floor 200. Simple as that, casual content.
But if you think about solo ranking player. It became a different things. Hardcore content.

In the end its about your perception on certain topic.
Some player even logins everyday, even 24/7 but just to AFK, eg: me

Honestly, SE is trying his best to attract players by simplifying content, but failed massively on retaining players.
Sure, ultimate is "hardcore" content, but it doesn't really retain players because:

1) players that cleared, won't tackle the content anymore ( unless they willing to helps other ) [ also include world race player that cleared in the first week, then went unsubbed until next patch ]
2) players that do not bothered to do the content
3) Player can just enjoy watching streamers play the content, while stay unsubbed
4) etc etc



I don't even know why am i typing these here.....

Why is this even necessary? Just play however you want.

I am a one-trick pony so that automatically makes me a bad player(in the eyes of statics who dont want a black mage), but i dont care, savage content is still attractive to me, i still do it fine, i dont put a lot of hours into the game per day, instead i spend what little hours i do play into optimizing my class around the fight, have i become good at it? Maybe, maybe not.

But im certainly not super hardcore, or any hardcore for that matter, i dont play a lot, i just play the game and have clear goals in mind for whatever hours i do put into the game, thats it.

Another person might try to collect all the glamour and put a lot more hours than me into the game, but does a different type of content.

Labeling everyone into different categories always ends up bad and creates drama.

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Originally Posted by Mofafafa

1) players that cleared, won't tackle the content anymore ( unless they willing to helps other ) [ also include world race player that cleared in the first week, then went unsubbed until next patch ]

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I can at least confirm that this isn't the case.

The progression teams in our FC have multiple kills of both Ultimates for additional weapons across multiple jobs and alt characters. They also reran coil in the weeks leading up to UWU to get the team adjusted to each other again.

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Originally Posted by Mofafafa

potd stuff.....

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Palace of the dead is actually quite a good example of the misunderstanding playerbase.

It it quite literally the most casual content you could possibly make it.

Yet there were so many complaints about 101-200 being too Hard core because you needed fixed group of players to do it.

It was never Hard core though it's content you could do literally 20-30 minutes once every week or 2 if you wanted and you could still make it to floor 200. Just Clearing 10 floors every couple of weeks whenever you had a spare half hour..

It was no where nearvthe Hard core content people said it was.

The problem people had was that most groups tried to make it Hard core by going from 51-200 non stop in a single evening. But the content itself was as casual asvyou can get.

I don't think players fit neatly into these categories as precisely as we'd like to hope they would.

I'm a mid-hardcore crafter, a high casual PVP'er and a mid-midcore raider.

I feel like at a glance I may hold the (apparently unpopular) opinion of agreeing more our less with your distinctions. I never really attributed these terms to playtime invested like I guess a lot of other people do. My boyfriend has more playtime than I do by a fair bit still but he is scared or disinterested in EX primals and will likely never touch Savage even if someone paid him. I would think of him as more casual than myself.

I do wonder if you'd humor a question that is not necessarily 100% the topic of this thread, if you don't want to it's cool I'm just curious. In all my interactions with you on the forums (both direct and just reading your posts) I've definitely paid attention and formulated certain assumptions about your opinions. I would assume you would be diametrically opposed to these sorts of classifications as they would (at least passively) reinforce a raider culture that you seem to dislike. Why makes this list at all when you seem more invested in this "everyone play this game for the fun of it and leave each other alone" mentality?

If you'd really like I could scope out some specific examples of things you've said that would make me question this but in general I'm refering to your expressed views on parsing/fflogs, unsolicited advice and an apparent inherent elitism in raider culture.

This isn't meant to invite discussion on any of those topics, I'd wager you'd agree they get discussed enough around here. I just enjoy understanding motivations and I'd like to know yours.

I agree the words would be more useful if given a standard definition that worked across the playerbase. The two overarching themes they seem to relate to are time and effort invested but if they refered to one or the other specifically it would likely avoid some misunderstandings.

It's impossible to classify millions of players into such few boxes. How would you classify a player that could definitely do all 'hardcore' content but they don't want to deal with the stress or can't ever find the time to do it? Would you call them casual? Midcore? It's way more complex than that.

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Originally Posted by MoroMurasaki

I would assume you would be diametrically opposed to these sorts of classifications.

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I'm not against classifications as descriptive. The problem is that people assign moral worth to social classes way too often, and tend to give a pass or be blind to the negative aspects of the higher classes. Elitism is more or less arguing that the difference classifications also have different value and different importance in themselves. This is very common in life...not just the game, and people tend to not realize how much they do it. There are always rich people, but you can really dislike what they do as a class. You have to realize the social classes exist before you can be angry at what they do.

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Originally Posted by Doozer

It's impossible to classify millions of players into such few boxes. How would you classify a player that could definitely do all 'hardcore' content but they don't want to deal with the stress or can't ever find the time to do it? Would you call them casual? Midcore? It's way more complex than that.

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Idk, people have made the point of intention, but this is more based on what players would actually do. I mean more about what aspects of the game you try. I couldn't classify based on how people see themselves; i mean what started this was hearing someone describe themselves as a casual ultimate raider.

These aren't set in stone though, they were just an attempt at trying to view different kinds of players as they exist. TBH i thought it might be good to have a little more positive content from me than i usually do.

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

I'm not against classifications as descriptive. The problem is that people assign moral worth to social classes way too often, and tend to give a pass or be blind to the negative aspects of the higher classes. Elitism is more or less arguing that the difference classifications also have different value and different importance in themselves. This is very common in life...not just the game, and people tend to not realize how much they do it. There are always rich people, but you can really dislike what they do as a class. You have to realize the social classes exist before you can be angry at what they do.



Idk, people have made the point of intention, but this is more based on what players would actually do. I mean more about what aspects of the game you try. I couldn't classify based on how people see themselves; i mean what started this was hearing someone describe themselves as a casual ultimate raider.

These aren't set in stone though, they were just an attempt at trying to view different kinds of players as they exist. TBH i thought it might be good to have a little more positive content from me than i usually do.

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Fair enough. For what it's worth I very much agree - skill does not make someone inherently to more valuable in the setting of a video game and I think this is why I've used casual/hardcore to refer to skill levels more than something like "good/bad" as Driavna suggests.

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Originally Posted by Driavna

Going to be blunt: stop mixing player skill (good-bad) with time played (casual-hardcore). All of those categories are more about feeling good because something is below you than anything else.

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I mentioned my boyfriend before. He is objectively less skilled than the rest of the people I play with but I would never describe him as "bad". He knows the content he can participate in with his current level of effort and stays within those realms. I feel like people who are so ready to call other players bad probably don't have many friends across different levels of play.

Also I just think the subjectivity of using good or bad is really suspect. To my boyfriend I'm good, to someone like Elia Sand I am awful. Arbitrary skill assignments (especially with inherent value attached to them) are just silly and a way to stroke people's own ego imo. If you (general you) need to call a huge number of people bad in a public forum just to feel better about yourself perhaps you need to work on you a bit.