Why do casuals act as if it's the end of the world when suggesting?

[Ralphe2449]

Except that's the opposite of what happened. The game's subs started to go down when they pandered too hard to casuals with things like Dungeon and Raid Finder.

Yeah i am sure this is why wow is so successful rn lmao

Tryhards kept moaning about raid finder and lfr which doesnt hurt them and always blamed it for everything, hell Preach which some promote now was the guy in WoD that kept screaming that lfr trinkets were too good for casuals and got them nerfed.

But I am happy for you to argue how more accessibility hurts the games population and pandering to tryhards is a great idea for people who just want to login and have fun xD

[Shurrikhan]

Not saying its something that always happens, i get the feeling WoW devs are tryhards themselves hence why they treat casuals and solo players like trash unlike ff14 where the lead dev even said he wants to focus more on solo casual players

I don't really get where this idea comes from. In WoW, as a casual player, I'd have access to far more content, and more meaningfully so. I have 8-12 endgame dungeons regularly rotated through, up from a grand total of ~8 only 3 of which are ever actually seen at a time. I have access to typically about double the raid bosses per expansion. I have 3 endgame zones with progressible systems and catch-up gear. I have 4 extra storylines at some ~4 hours' content apiece and progression for those. I have far finer difficulty levels available, as not to hit just hit a wall in having to jump from LFR to the equivalent of the harder end of Savage. There's flexible raid size, so it's far easier to form and maintain groups rather than having to leave out the unlucky remainders or leave and reform as soon as someone has to leave. People can change specs mid-raid, so we can also more easily adjust role compositions without leaving or regrouping at all. Heck, adding players doesn't even require leaving. There are tremendously more ways to gear up, even including XIV-like deterministic currency-based gearing (albeit less front-and-center). Weekly challenges are more integral and worthwhile. Gold-saucer equivalents aside, there's a fair bit more side-content. There's frequently rotated Unreal periods for entire expansions, rather than just select raids available for only a short time. If we were to look at actual gameplay time (not cutscenes and convos), there's about as much MSQ content. Catch-up gearing is far less time-gated. Etc., etc.

Where does this "WoW hates casuals" narrative come from? It's not like people regularly do Savage through the DF here, so why do we expect that to be the case there? Here, too, it's not like you can reach Savage BiS without actually doing Savage until far, far later, so why do we expect that to be the case there?

Except that's the opposite of what happened. The game's subs started to go down when they pandered too hard to casuals with things like Dungeon and Raid Finder.

This, however, also seems conflated. WoW's subs peaked after dungeon finder became a main feature. WoW's subs spiked with the addition of Raid Finder. The game's subs went down first because of increasingly little content output and certain poor decisions, and later because of content-development time being siphoned (in ultimately useless fashion) towards systems-development.

Simply making it easier to form a damned party to actually do the content one wants to do did not diminish the game.

[Rolder50]

Yeah i am sure this is why wow is so successful rn lmao

Tryhards kept moaning about raid finder and lfr which doesnt hurt them and always blamed it for everything, hell Preach which some promote now was the guy in WoD that kept screaming that lfr trinkets were too good for casuals and got them nerfed.

But I am happy for you to argue how more accessibility hurts the games population and pandering to tryhards is a great idea for people who just want to login and have fun xD

It's simple; in Vanilla, TBC, and most of Wrath, they catered to tryhards and the game had 10 million subs. They stopped, subs started to go down. Hmm...

[Shurrikhan]

It's simple; in Vanilla, TBC, and most of Wrath, they catered to tryhards and the game had 10 million subs. They stopped, subs started to go down. Hmm...

Vanilla did not go out of its way to cater to tryhards; it was simply barebone.

Wrath was anything but tryhard-catering; it was far more casual-friendly, even, than Cataclysm, and did go out of its way to try to make the casual experience better, and retained higher sub counts partly for having done so.

hell Preach which some promote now was the guy in WoD that kept screaming that lfr trinkets were too good for casuals

Specific trinkets were so good that one could be expected to do LFR for them before even going on to Normal raiding. We're talking massive damage bonuses that, worse, sometimes barely scaled with ilvl. Yes, they were overtuned. One can point that out without being "anti-casual".

[Ralphe2449]

Where does this "WoW hates casuals" narrative come from?

Rewards and power.

Rep mounts and most casual rewards are often rushed simply due to quantity, there was a meme with all the generic horse mounts they gave to rep vendors which are literally just recolours, those arent fun rewards and the cool rewards/titles almost always come from high end content aka rewards people want so much they buy boosts for, heroic boss mount or some mythic mounts like sylvanas.

And you are aware that especially since SL begun casuals cannot get gear that isnt trash, because that is the definition of gear that is literally 30 ilvls than what is available and is also easily achieved by just buying a m+15 per week so let's not pretend mythic gear is some epic achievement.
In legion and bfa people at least had some way of getting solo gear that is good, titanforging and visions allowed people to get really good competitive gear which made them feel power, an important part of mmorpgs. But because WoW panders to tryhards who keep moaning "omg you cant force me to do dirty casual content for gear" all sources of good gear from solo casual content have been completely gutted, in the same way Preach cried during WoD that he was forced to do dirty casual lfr for trinkets which got the trinkets nerfed.
All those things happen because tryhards moan that they are "forced" to do content that is "beneath" them and blizzard listens, guts all rewards and powerful gear for their sake leaving casuals with scraps since shadowlands begun and the numbers so that casuals left in droves because even BFA was better casual population wise

On contrast in ff14 you can get gear that is far closer to max level so your character doesnt feel like shit to play especially in pvp, because WoW pvp is a disaster exactly because they allow people with 30 ilvls difference go against each other and 30 ilvls of power is ENORMOUS difference, you might as well be a free kill if you join without mythic gear a month or two after a patch.

[Shurrikhan]

Rewards and power.

Rep mounts and most casual rewards are often rushed simply due to quantity, there was a meme with all the generic horse mounts they gave to rep vendors which are literally just recolours, those arent fun rewards and the cool rewards/titles almost always come from high end content aka rewards people want so much they buy boosts for, heroic boss mount or some mythic mounts like sylvanas.

...And Savage mounts are...?

And you are aware that especially since SL begun casuals cannot get gear that isnt trash, because that is the definition of gear that is literally 30 ilvls than what is available and is also easily achieved by just buying a m+15 per week so let's not pretend mythic gear is some epic achievement.

A pretty damn casual player (modest understanding of their spec and how to coordinate, with little extra time or interest put into optimizing anything) can still typically manage a +10, which is enough to get within 15 ilvl of the +15 rewards you're railing against.

And I can get within 15 item levels of Heroic raid gear (equal to having fully decked out Normal raid gear -- equivalent to the easier end of Savage) just by upgrading sidecontent gear.

...What are you on about, exactly?

But because WoW panders to tryhards who keep moaning "omg you cant force me to do dirty casual content for gear" all sources of good gear from solo casual content have been completely gutted, in the same way Preach cried during WoD that he was forced to do dirty casual lfr for trinkets which got the trinkets nerfed.

"So, this trinket does about 300% the throughput of its competitors and barely scales with item level, to the point that a spec's output can vary by 14% dps just from having it. That's not good design." --> "Screw filthy casuals."

...Again, what are you on about?

because WoW pvp is a disaster exactly because they allow people with 30 ilvls difference go against each other and 30 ilvls of power is ENORMOUS difference

While I'd be fine with gear being a non-factor in PvP again (and they seem to be going back towards that direction next expansion), it's not an "enormous" difference. The effect of ilvl differences is already squished in PvP to a small fraction of what that gap would be in PvE. If you're getting utterly destroyed in PvP, that's gonna have relatively little to do with gear.

All those things happen because tryhards moan that they are "forced" to do content that is "beneath" them and blizzard listens

No, Blizzard literally has never listened to requests to not require zero-difficulty grinds of unwanted content loops as part of progression. They still force raiders through mind-numbing side-content grinds (Choreghast) just to have access to playstyle-forming upgrades like Legendaries.


You're off on virtually on counts here.

[EaraGrace]

It's simple; in Vanilla, TBC, and most of Wrath, they catered to tryhards and the game had 10 million subs. They stopped, subs started to go down. Hmm...

Hard disagree. If anything, WoW is the “baby’s first MMO” of the early 2000s with no deleveling, mobs you could solo, and a lot of QoL improvements over its competitors.

[Krotoan]

There is just no in between with these people, they just think there is only braindead easy and elite hardcore difficult,

but then..

Dungeons are braindead easy you can clear it with just using your 1-2-3 buttons and a healbot,

... Ever think that some people might find that kinda midcore?


Your idea of hardcore and others idea of easy are likely wildly different.. maybe you ARE asking for what they consider "savage" difficulty?


Sure people react strongly.. but when you tell them that something they find challenging or at least engaging is "braindead easy"... maybe they have a point?

[Shurrikhan]

... Ever think that some people might find that kinda midcore?

Could you (or, anyone) honestly call dungeons, content that people could AoE-step-one spam or auto-attack their way through, "midcore"?

Yes, subjectivity is a thing, but to go to the absolute minimum difficulty and suddenly call it "midcore" (i.e., "between the content regularly pursued by the 'hardcore' --those who prefer challenge and generally gravitate towards whatever sub-genres of content in the game that most provide it and/or reward commitment/investment in terms of time or knowledge-- and 'casual' --those who would form a pseudo-group that tends to prefer a broader span of content or may not find the more challenge-centric content as enjoyable or accessible (sometimes due to lacking the specific interest or contiguous time required to make satisfying progress in such sub-genres)"... is not a matter of subjectivity. That's just a misnomer.

[Raoabolic]

The question can be turned around. Why can't the hardcore be satisfied with the exclusive content catered to their playstyle and allow the casual player base to enjoy the content catered to their playstyle? In most of these arguments, it's not the more casual player base that never touches that content that's asking for more.

That would be pretty sweet if that was the case but that sort of example falls flat when the devs are actively making content that was considered middle ground (current tier raids, 8 man raids, expert dungeons, ect.) easier due to the lack of mechanics that require you to do something outside of avoid the AoE. It would be like getting upset at someone who is complaining about having to eat pizza in a pizza place and their friend said "Why can't you be satisfied with the non pizza food offered?". Sure, it's there but the restaurant is not known for their dried out pasta and watery red sauce that isn't used on their pizza. Same situation and hopefully the criterion dungeons might be their answer. My heart says that's the case but my brain says "they are going to screw it up. :^)". Then again, i'm a glass half empty kind of guy, lol.