Gamer lables -- why

After reading the forums since 1.0, and gaming for 27 years of my 30 years i have been alive something baffles me in ff14.

What is with all this stupid petty gamer lables?

Hardcare vs casual

raider vs non-raider

hardcore - midcore - casual

having a life vs no life

When did we gamers start seperating ourselves in these catagories? Why do people fight over this stuff when it's gamer made and not even a real concept.

Why in ff14, more so then any mmo I have played, do people think "casual" means easy and "hardcore" means hard? Why in ff14 there is hate between raiders and non-raiders? why in ff14 there is hate between the "casual" and "hardcore", and what is this midcore?

I've play ff11 for 10 years, WoW on and off for 2 years, and Aion for 6 mnths. And this community almost goes civil rights movent era with the labling of the playerbase.

My opinion is, its stupid. We are all ff14 players, we are all gamers. Sure we all have different ideals, goals, outlooks but to pick fights is just dumb.

I've always wondered when did this all start? And why does it keep going? Why pick fights over it?

Why use this to make arguments over content?

The only thing I ask is to keep it civil :) I'm not trolling or click baiting. I'm actually curious about this stuff as ff14 the first real time I've seen it in mmo so openly

Players have differing tastes and as such not all content appeals to all players. Those labels are attempts to define content by the groups of players that enjoy them.

For example, a hardcore player might find casual content boring while a casual player might find Hardcore too stressful to be enjoyable. As such a hardcore player will value casual content less and vies versa.

Since devs have a limit to the amount of content they can create, players naturally argue over which type of content the developers should focus on, usually favouring their own preferred type of content.

Humans are hard wired to try and define and organise things they see into systems they can understand. There's a case on a American army base where a pigeon language was used to communicate between varying nationalities where children growing up of the base naturally developed a grammar system for the language subconsciously as they learned it.

All I can say is you must have played WoW a very very long time ago. What happens there is 10000000x worse than anything you could ever fear to see here.

That said, as for why? Human nature I suppose... we are constantly categorizing ourself outside of games.. it's not a stretch to assume that it carries over.

ok. what would be considered hardcore content, and casual content?

And i fully understand players having different tastes. (said so in my post) And I fully understand the devs having limits in content. Just ff11 wasn't really like this too much. It was u did end game or didn't, no hate or fighting happen as far as I know. This started a bit in WoW from what I personally noticed, just seems more prevelent in ff14.

For me I'm a gamer, nothing in any game has ever been too easy or too hard. I don't consider dieing alot as somethung hard, just something you learn from. I am not good at platformers, but i wouldn't call them hard.

My first game was Zelda on the NES it was 1988 and i was 3 years old. It was my mom former room mates system and she let me play it.

i guess I'd be a no-lifer, I pretty much play games every waking moment (i'm not fond of tv as it bores me, and my town is dead) I tend to beat games easily wuth in a 3 days to a week. One month tops if its a weird game with odd controls.

And yes i played WoW @ wrath quit after a year thenb at CATA quit after a year. had 73 retarts each so i never made it past 46.

When i was growing up, we gamers never used lables so it is weird these pop up now a days after like 40 years of gaming.


i hit the daily limit.


The weird thing is... ff11 existed before ff14. It too had mmo player from EQ, ultima, EQ2, ect. And those who playing cuz it was final fantasy.

I don't see too many content lables outside of hardmode expert which is just game based "difficaulty" Difficaulty is subjective.

I'm asking what is considered hardcore casual and midcore. As these lables didn't exist in ff11 and we had a wide range of content from open world to instence.

What makes ff11 playerbase different then ff14s in the regard of lables.

@ recaldy, what is with the post? It dosn't take part in any of the topic. I'm asking legitiment questions here. And simply stating my 2 cents on the subject.
If you have any info or opinions please share. I'm not debating for or against anything nor argueing about this or complaining. Just seeking a better understanding of this stuff.

I think it so much more visible now cause XIV has a large demographic player base. You have the MMO players and then you have the people playing just because it a Final Fantasy title.

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Originally Posted by Azazua_azura

hardcore - midcore - casual

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FFXIV is one of the few MMORPG's in the 21st century that offer defined tiers of content. Hardcore content is hardcore content, midcore content is midcore, casual is casual.


While in WoW, you can do anything and everything, just logging in 2-3 days a week 2-3 hours each day. Everything is casual. Can't label or categorize when there's only one thing.

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Originally Posted by KaedrianLiang

FFXIV is one of the few MMORPG's in the 21st century that offer defined tiers of content. Hardcore content is hardcore content, midcore content is midcore, casual is casual.


While in WoW, you can do anything and everything, just logging in 2-3 days a week 2-3 hours each day. Everything is casual. Can't label or categorize when there's only one thing.

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I can guaruntee you a casual wow player isn't clearing the current raid on mythic.

It keeps going because some people who clear difficult things want to inflate their e-peen by pretending it makes them part of some Special Cool Kid Club when in reality it just means they beat a hard thing in a video game. So they label themselves "hardcore", and anyone below their mythic status is "a casual".

Because we're all hungry hungry hypocrites, much like drug addicts lol at the end of the day we're all just nerds trying to escape reality.

The only titles that really matter

Bartle's Taxonomy

This is what I understand about casual, midcore and hardcore. It might not be 100% true or applicable to FFXIV, but I think is the ideal.

Casual: Storymode, simple content that you can complete leisurely, at your own pace and in a short time, without even knowing whats going on. You can't do wrong. People identified as casual are usually parents or people with a busy real life, leaving them with limited playtime to do anything "serious" (like a 2 hours raid). Content like Titan HM/EX, Ramuh EX, Bahamut coil tuns 5, 9, 12 and 13 and even Alexander normal are WAY too much for them. For whatever reason, expending hours studying that content and trying to beat it is just not fun for them.

Hardcore: Raids, Savage mode, maybe EX primals. Content that requires a well organized group, voice chat and the best gear in order to successfully and repeatedly beat it. Everyone has to study the mechanics and be efficient in their role. One "lazy/clumsy" member can ruin the "hard work" of everyone in the party. People labeled as hardcore tend to care a LOT about their gaming experience. They strive to be "server first". Must have the best available gear, be able to say that they "beat it" -- whatever "it" is --, they know everything about the game, about their class/job/role, and of course, can dedicate hours and hours to the game. Not necessarily because they have 'no life', but because they want and can.

Midcore: Something between casual and hardcore. They can do raids, savage, ex primals and stuff like a hardcore, but they aren't as dedicated. They still tend to progress the game at their own pace, while hardcores are max level and all geared up, midcores are still a several levels behind and havent even start to gear up (meanwhile casuals are still just taking in the scenery and trying to decide if they are interested in the new content yet, or not.) Midcores might have been hardcores in the past, but for some reason or another, they cannot longer dedicate that much of their time and energy to games as they used to. They do enjoy hard-to-beat content, but they are able to take things slowly, and even enjoy old content with the casuals.

Anyways, that's how I would define those labels. I don't think they are stupid or unnecessary, I think they are just different play styles, very much in the same way we have different games preferences. Me for example, I consider myself midcore: I enjoy hard content, I study it, I can perform my role well and I'm able to carry my own weight and others. But I can't be bothered trying to be "server first" on whatever and not gonna bother leveling every job just so I can have all the crossclass abilities. "I will get there, when I get there... and will do it well".

where it the PvP'er vs Non- PvP'er label?

To answer the original question:

I see it like this. Many gamers, have exactly that (gaming) in their lives, and that's it. That's quite a hit to take sometimes . Sure gaming can be a profession but only a very rare few are anywhere near good enough to take advantage of that. Some people get so lost into the world of gaming but with no real point to their existence within it that they feel the need to feel important, feel special. They do that the only way they know how, by creating divisions within the community at large to make themselves seem more important within it. During this they often lose sight of the ultimate point of doing what we do, and that's having fun.


Couple this ^, with the generally toxic and obnoxious behavior of western culture and the entire concepts of 'winning' and 'being the best of the best' and you end up with ridiculous elitist attitude for something that ultimately does not matter in the real world. No one outside of whatever game you play cares if you cleared this raid or got this item or progressed to this dungeon. They don't give two squirts of piss about your arena ranking or how well you can mash buttons. Because unless you're pro, it does NOT matter.


And by the way, 'casual' and 'hardcore' are not opposite extremes of the same scale. One is simply a matter of the amount of time one has to devote to a game or activity (not necessitating that content be 'easy') the other is a preference of difficulty. Midcore is a bullshit term someone made up to try and fill in the gaps between two 'labels' that are not related.

Man, there are some really negative views on player labels/groupings. I honestly think it's more a case of this:

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Originally Posted by Belhi

Humans are hard wired to try and define and organise things they see into systems they can understand.

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than anything having to do with epeen waving or thinking that clearing content makes you The Specialest Snowflake Evar. The vast majority of us don't have any illusions about being just another nerd-child behind a keyboard or gamepad here. It's categorization, nothing more and nothing less. Further, it's gamers wanting to play with others that are on the same wavelength. That's not to say that nobody has friends with other interests, but a raiding static that wants to do progression 5 days a week for 3 hours a day probably isn't going to try someone out that's here for glamour and roleplay. This kind of organization is a tool, and like any tool it can be misused. Misuse is not the fault of the tool itself and doesn't make it any less useful to those that use it wisely.

I honestly think that categories are somewhat fluid based on the point of view of the person giving the definition. A six day a week raider would see me as being less into raiding than them (we go 2-3 times generally), but someone that is mostly here for glamour or roleplay might lump all people interested in raiding together into the same category. I'd consider myself midcore. I enjoy raiding, but it's not all I'm here to do. My static's filled our roster (finally) and started on A3S; we expect to make progress on it in the coming weeks. The thing is, I'm just as apt to be found crafting, gathering, redecorating my house, or helping with learning parties as I am to be found in progression. Outside of raid times I'll review videos if there's anything I need help with, but ultimately I find that going into a raid too often is detrimental to my learning it. So I limit my raid time and accept that I'm going to progress slower than others.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with categorizing people; it's when you start pigeonholing them and slapping detrimental meanings on those labels that the problems start. That's where you run into overused epithets like elitists, filthy casuals, etc.

It started when players were out of arguments and searched for excuses to defend a bad gamedesign!

It is possible to have "all" and make "everyone" happy, but you have to fix stuff and not cover it with more and bury it alive...
Example Currency: Lets take MGP -> Can you buy them with tomestones or Gil, not even with hunting seals or scrips...
Other Example: So, we have scrips to farm just to trade them into books as currency for the "real thing"...

Square Enix should focus more on the Characters viewpoint and have it like an adventure!
Can we hire mercenaries with our self made leve quests?
Can we hire Crafters thrugh the ingame system without paying them gil we dont have?
Can we finally have some recovery in bossfights and not whipe with one failure?
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Originally Posted by Ashkendor

The vast majority of us...

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You might want to break this newsflash to the rest of "the majority of you". Because the way "the majority of you" act on forums and in game says exactly the opposite of what you're trying to claim is just so simple as categorization.

Why? Because we're human. I too have been gaming a long time, since the Atari era. Online gaming has really only come to fruition in the latter half of that, where competition between people greatly increased. A lot of people need the feeling of being better than others. What we do in real life also affects that, from what we drive to what we wear to what we eat. Don't even bring up religion. So I think a lot of this has transferred to the virtual world. Everyone wants to feel special in their own way and anyone who challenges that will take offense to that. Online gaming has also brought the entire world to one place and interacting with other cultures will create tension. As one may think what they say or do is fine, the other may take offense to it, creating a snowball effect.

Labels exist everywhere, like it or not. Whether it be out in the open or what people just think about you, its human nature. We are not all the same person, would be pretty bad if we were. We are not robots we have free will and thinking, deep thinking. It actually baffles people how our brain function differs so much from the animal world (aliens). Put a diverse group of people into the same room together and see what happens. People will eventually break up into groups of like minded and start making labels or talking about the other groups. Online gaming is just a really big room.

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Originally Posted by RyuRoots

It keeps going because some people who clear difficult things want to inflate their e-peen by pretending it makes them part of some Special Cool Kid Club when in reality it just means they beat a hard thing in a video game. So they label themselves "hardcore", and anyone below their mythic status is "a casual".

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In general, people want to beat difficult things for the challenge, gear and other rewards, it's only the casuals who believe that the evil raiders do it for e-peen and to look down on you. If you actually think the raiding community cares enough about you to go beat raids just to look down on you, you have issues.

FFXIV enforces this distinction too. Alex Savage is the only hardcore content in the game, everything else is casual/easy and there is currently no midcore content at all.

The word "hardcore" is often miss use. It quantify the amount of time put into something.

Hardcore gatherer: red scrips, favors, log every day.
Hardcore crafter: red scrips, high end recipes, craft every day.
Harcore player: play every day.
Harcore raider: Alex Savage every day for fun and challenge.

Casual gatherer: do it for fun or comodity.
Casual crafter: do it for fun or comodity.
Casual player: play once in a while for fun.
Casual raider: log once a week for Alex Savage.

Someone can be "Hardcore" without raiding. Someone can also be "Casual" even if he do Alex Savage.

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Originally Posted by Elazu

In general, people want to beat difficult things for the challenge, gear and other rewards, it's only the casuals who believe that the evil raiders do it for e-peen and to look down on you. If you actually think the raiding community cares enough about you to go beat raids just to look down on you, you have issues.

FFXIV enforces this distinction too. Alex Savage is the only hardcore content in the game, everything else is casual/easy and there is currently no midcore content at all.

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You realize by calling out "casuals"by not only generalizing but by assuming that " casuals" don't have the drive or skill to want to beat difficult things that you're making the problem between the two worse right? Though I will say the game does indeed extremely separate the difference between easy and hard content.

On topic though, I don't mind categories as humans we're going to do it regardless. What I mind is the words we choose to categorize each other. Instead of naming different gamers by the free time they have to play games and leaving it at that, we also (stupidly) tie it into skill.
Instead of the term casual depicting someone who has a busy life and plays games at a casual pace. It gets tied to difficulty, not being able to play difficult games, or lacking the skill to do so. The term hardcore is also just wrong to depict someone with more free time and gets tied to having greater skill which is wrong. The only difference is in how quickly either one will go through a difficult game.

For example, I only have about an hour to two a day to play games. It took me about two months to beat each of the souls game but not because I lacked skill, I lacked time.

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Originally Posted by Twilite

I don't know what people like you do to have such less free time. 1 or 2 hours is not enough for me to do anything meaningful, I simply wouldn't bother.

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Work and family time for the most part. "Anything meaningful" varies as I'm obviously not beating a boss in every sitting but with a small amount of thinking about what I'd like to do or where I'd like to head every day helps to always move forward and never stall. I honestly have more fun in these small sittings than when I have hours to play as I find it easier to get frustrated in long sittings when I get stuck on a difficult point. Feels I have more freedom to think on what went wrong or what I (or in an mmo case what the party) could do different to clear the content.

Those labels been around before there was FFXIV and even FFXI. You just haven't played certain MMOs to see them before then.

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Originally Posted by Souto_Nami

For example, I only have about an hour to two a day to play games. It took me about two months to beat each of the souls game but not because I lacked skill, I lacked time.

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I don't know what people like you do to have such less free time. 1 or 2 hours is not enough for me to do anything meaningful, I simply wouldn't bother.

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Originally Posted by RyuRoots

It keeps going because some people who clear difficult things want to inflate their e-peen by pretending it makes them part of some Special Cool Kid Club when in reality it just means they beat a hard thing in a video game. So they label themselves "hardcore", and anyone below their mythic status is "a casual".

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Wow, someone's projecting.

I find the hardcore label fairly limited in how useful it actually is. At most it just means you take the game seriously when it comes to performance. There's nothing wrong with not taking it seriously when the game isn't demanding that much of you, but for hard/tedious to complete goals you have to actually dedicate a part of your efforts to succeeding. That's what makes you hardcore. Most players act hardcore about things in-game in various ways at some point or another.

The problem I have with gamer labels is that they tend to be incredibly black and white with one side accepting no other interpretations. You see this alot in the parser threads, an inordinate amount of pro-parser people asserting that good players use them and those that don't aren't good players. Players come in too many flavors to quantify in a black and white manner and the whole notion of labeling only serves to make those doing the labeling out to be compensating for something.

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Originally Posted by Twilite

I don't know what people like you do to have such less free time. 1 or 2 hours is not enough for me to do anything meaningful, I simply wouldn't bother.

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It depends on what kind of work a person does and how much responsibility they have over different things. And of course, how much they care about their own well being.

Example. Wake up at 6, shower, do hair and makeup, get breakfast ready and eat it, travel to work. Work 8-16, pick up kids / go by the shop, home at ~17. Make dinner, eat it while chatting with kids. Do some quick housework and go to the gym / jogging, back by 19:30. Prepare tomorrow's work (school lesson / presentation / report etc). Chat and cuddle with spouse. Whoops time flies and it's now 21:00. That leaves 2 hours of playtime (unless spouse wants to cuddle some more...) in order to get a healthy amount of sleep. And when you have no gym for the day there's helping with kids' homework, stuff to do around the house or errands to run. Friends may want to come by. And this example doesn't even include taking care of pets or ill family members, and hanging out with the kids.

So it's a choice between either giving up gaming altogether or playing casually. To me playing casually is still more meaningful than watching tv or reading facebook, so I wouldn't completely give it up. I'm still a student so I can usually make time where I need it, but I'm not looking forward to preparing materials for 6 school years at the same time once I get a job as a teacher... D:

It's strange, I remember when I was young playing NES games was a way I made some of my friends I still have today. None of us cared how good the other person was, it was all about having fun and bonding over a common interest. In my college dorm I can recall gaming with people on my floor and even then skill level was never of any concern. I guess when the person with the other controller is not in the same room as you people just don't want to treat them like another human being. Instead you just create a label for them based on their performance.

http://i.imgur.com/IDBNq98.jpg

:P

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Originally Posted by Gilraen

The problem I have with gamer labels is that they tend to be incredibly black and white with one side accepting no other interpretations. You see this alot in the parser threads, an inordinate amount of pro-parser people asserting that good players use them and those that don't aren't good players. Players come in too many flavors to quantify in a black and white manner and the whole notion of labeling only serves to make those doing the labeling out to be compensating for something.

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This is pretty much what I'm getting at, the negativity with the lables.


Thanks for the great replies btw,ut please keep it civil I don't want to see this turn into a flame fest, no one persons opinion is wrong. So please don't bicker over it.

I also find it weird people claim to not have enough time to play, in ff11 people had full time jobs, families, did other stuff infact i had a few teachers in my LS yet they all could dedicate 5 hours to ff11. What changed?

I know that off topic, but I'm curious about it.

Well, XI was a different beast. Everything in it was slower, more committed. It took hours to grind up 2-3 levels, sometimes hours to get a party to grind up levels with. You needed to have the time available if you ever wanted to get anything done. Removing the level caps in older areas helped alleviate this, as did level syncing and exp boosting consumables, but it didn't really alleviate the grind, just made it a bit more bearable. XIV, on the other hand, is faster. Much faster. It doesn't require the same time commitment as XI did. Want to level quickly, just run dungeons ad nauseaum and tada! A level in likely less than an hour. XIV's real grind comes in the form of the currencies like tomes and seals, but you only get a bonus for these once a day so most people just run the content for it's bonus and call it a day. Barely an hour spent each day.

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Originally Posted by Azazua_azura

I also find it weird people claim to not have enough time to play, in ff11 people had full time jobs, families, did other stuff infact i had a few teachers in my LS yet they all could dedicate 5 hours to ff11. What changed?

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I could camp NMs for my LS in a separate window/screen whilst at work and use those 8hrs/day 'constructively' XD

FFXIV is a lot more busy.

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Originally Posted by Twilite

I don't know what people like you do to have such less free time. 1 or 2 hours is not enough for me to do anything meaningful, I simply wouldn't bother.

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24 (Total hours in a day)

-8 (sleep)
-9 (work)
-1 (commute)
-2 (chores: cooking, cleaning, laundry, pets, etc)
-1 (hygiene: showering, brushing teeth, etc.)
-1 (misc: because random stuff always comes up)

Remainder: 2 hours and that's not even including trying to maintain an exercise regiment or factoring in any extra social interactions such as hanging out with friends.

Would I like to play this and other games more? Yes, of course. Do I have the time for it? Most of the time, no. Real life takes precedence, as it should.

Labels have been around for quite some time (dating back to EQ) Hardcore Raiders, Raiders, Casuals -- All labels were used back then. The new trend however is the divide between these groups of people. This is the problem, it isnt the label itself. Lately people complain so much at the disparity of content that cater to these specific groups.


People want a game that has enough meaningful and lasting content for ALL groups, not just one. This is why there is a divide, because developers cant seem to get it right these days. Its sad :(