How do people calling themselves casual feel about the difficulty level?

[Cherie]

Hardcore, casual etc are all subjective. Is someone who plays 4 hours a day yet only does basic content (no hard content) hardcore simply because (s)he plays a lot? Or is the person who plays for 2 hours on Monday clearing all EX's and coil for the week hardcore?

That's one of the reasons I never liked that debate since it's all up to the perspective of the person viewing it.

I have no disagreement, that is what I was saying actually. If you go back and read what I said...

Maybe you are just agreeing with me, if so, thank you. Are you quoting me to disprove the point that I was trying to disprove by quoting me trying to disprove said point? :O Quote-ception!

Maybe I'm just bad at forums and communicating.... I'm a casual forum user! j/k

[Nuinn]

-snip- it be nice to see more ppl talking and less standing around like a stone -snip-

^ This. So much this.

I'm aware it's completely individual and is something the playerbase is responsible for etc. but, for a MMO the social factor in ARR feels very, very flat. No, I don't consider mere bundling of people in parties of 8 to be much social, especially when most don't say "Hello" (cause, why bother?)

It's not even the usual pre-patch death in the open world (aka giant hub you do trivial stuff in - as opposed to the only important part for progression: the instances). I'm a big talker and I miss the banter in /sh or /s. Even I feel discouraged at times to discuss things that are not battle related cause they're borderline trivial (who wants to listen to you talk about melded stuff when gear drops like crazy.... stuff like that).

[Kuwagami]

Two hours a night is kinda hardcore wouldn't you think?

cutting people's sentences is good if rightly done. You forgot "each night I don't study for exams" and I happen to have exams or just work to do very often. Also, even if my playtime is (no point to deny it) fairly high, if mostly consists in running around in Eorzea. I roughly use the teleport function, just because the world is beautiful and I have a nice chocobo/magiteck which can carry me everywhere.

Please allow me to restate my point. I did post a lot of statistics that either some people may not agree with (didn't you kind of do that as well to dispute me? where are you getting your numbers from?), or perhaps, maybe my server leviathan is not typical. We are both stating numbers based on what we have both observed. So I don't think it's going to do any good for us to go back and forth on this. We see what we see, it's not like either of us have done or can actually do a test to get statistics.

Actually, my numbers (the precise ones I gave) came from previous live letters or interviews. I'm still trying to gather them back. (to be fair, the 5% on Titan was in december, right before the 2.1 patch. There were also like 0.5% who did beat the game at that point). Yours only come from the highly crowded areas, which are filled with bored top tier players every day of the week past monday. Not quite accurate I should say, and it's not only on leviathan.

It seems you say yes. Ok, that's totally cool. If you think about it, that's why I was asking. Thank you for your input. I guess I am thinking you are taking offense like I'm doing a whole hardcore vs casual thing. That is a dead horse I don't want lol.

Not taking offense in any manner But my statement was more something like "Not necessarily more difficult but more challenging every day. Not something hard the first 2 times and then boringly easy". aka pharos sirius over copperbell HM

[Dyvid]

Do people that would call themselves casual think this game is too hard (if you think about it, it is basically the thread title).

No, I think it's balanced just right. In the typical MMO sense of the word, hardcore were player that could devote anywhere from 4 to 20 hours a day playing the game where as casuals were between 30mins to 4 hours. Challenge in elder gaming was based on time to complete, not actually difficulty (maybe this game design was also influenced by internet connection in the late 90's, early 00's). Fast forward to today and I think the term casual best suits content that can be finished in a random group generator (Duty Finder) where as hardcore requires more coordination and communication as well as experience with the content.

[Hysterior]

My gf who only plays on weekend and has only one job lv 50 cleared twintania before me, a multi lv 50 playing almost everyday.... casuals can clear everything in the game.

[lxSch]

Do you seriously believe you'll gear up to i110 average by doing the new content a single time? (if i110 is the new max)

What game are you playing again? It sure can't be the same as I am playing.

i90 weapon - titan hm once, rest i90 - weekly myth cap.
I heard in 2.2 myth cap will be removed, so i guess there will be new tomestones with weekly cap and it should work the same way it is now.

[ItzKris]

Im extremely casual so i'd like to give my opinion.
The difficulty overall seems just fine. I'm iLvl 83 on my Whm.
CT seems too easy.
Ive gotten as far as extreme Garuda but haven't cleared it yet. I have only attempted it about 5 times though.
I haven't tried coils yet since i'm waiting on Duty Finder.

[Nekodar]

i90 weapon - titan hm once, rest i90 - weekly myth cap.
I heard in 2.2 myth cap will be removed, so i guess there will be new tomestones with weekly cap and it should work the same way it is now.

So you're running stuff more than once... contradicting your own words...

[Cherie]

cutting people's sentences is good if rightly done. You forgot "each night I don't study for exams" and I happen to have exams or just work to do very often. Also, even if my playtime is (no point to deny it) fairly high, if mostly consists in running around in Eorzea. I roughly use the teleport function, just because the world is beautiful and I have a nice chocobo/magiteck which can carry me everywhere.

Ok, I won't break up your sentences. :P

"Not necessarily more difficult but more challenging every day. Not something hard the first 2 times and then boringly easy". aka pharos sirius over copperbell HM

I'm sorry, I do not understand what you mean by this.
Would it be fair to say that you would appreciate content that maintains your interest by having some kind of difficulty?

Why are we in disagreement? lol.. Ok, it seems you just disagree with me as a poster but not my point...

Thank you for agreeing?

*Group Hug*

[Yurimi]

I consider myself highly casual (I gave up progression contentwhen I came to this game) and I would say my playtime atm for the last 4 weeks or so has been about 2-3hrs a week outside of chatting with people which I log in via remote desktop on my iPad to do while I walk around the house or do other stuff. even playing as little as I do I have done T1-4 and EX primals (just havent bothered with doing T5) and I must say... I am extremely bored. This character is one of many i have leveled mostly out of boredom (I have 6 WHM's at 50 because its one of the few jobs I enjoy and 2 characters that have multiple jobs at 50) so on this character I didnt start doing coil until most stuff was known (out of choice again I gave up bashing my head against a wall for 10hrs a night to beat content the first week) and I didnt start doing EX primals until probably a month after they had been out.

Lately I find myself struggling to find things to amuse myself with in game. I dont like the other jobs enough to level them to the point I make a new character to level and experience the story again then after getting to Lv. 20 or 25 I get bored and change them to WHM because its actually fun. I usually sit in gridania refreshing party finder looking for people who are doing things that might be something of a challenge (i59 titans i54 garuda's i49 ifrits i65 ultima's) because there isnt enough of anything really to do. more and more lately I find myself playing WoW or FFXI windowed and to the side enough to read the chat log so I can occasionally tab back in to chat but actually play something fun. This game may be a challenge to some people but as a casual player I must say even to me the game got old and I am simply waiting for the people I chat with to move to another game so I can join them there. I have them on skype so lately I debate on with my sub renewel coming up this saturday whether its even worth it to pay for another month when skype is free.

TL;DR I got bored of this game playing a few hours a week casually, there is no challenge to the content after the first 3 weeks of it being out and while I am not a progression raider I do learn stuff with my group afterwards (I dont pug I just dont join the progression raid teams). its been 6 months and the end game is still the same it was back on launch and while a new patch is otw it will be another 6 months you need to make that content last and I am out of steam to level more WHM's to use for filler content to do between artificial locks because making content difficult might create "stress" so making it so you can clear it in 20mins but only once a week is the solution.